Certified Pre Owned
by KF fan
Summary: The Justice League is getting rid of its old, stationary position transporter system that moves heroes to and from tubes at specific locations. The Titans install the transporter system at the Tower and test it. What could go wrong while BB takes a call?
1. Chapter 1

At first, Robin wanted to refuse it because nothing got his obsessive compulsive disorder and stubborness going like talking to the Bat.

"Kids", he grumbled to himself several times that morning till the others were smirking and glancing at each other.

"Kids" while checking out the interpol communiques from that morning.

"Kids! Like what, meddling kids? Do we tag along with Scooby and Shaggy?" he muttered while typing out the case file for the previous night's near waste of time apprehension of some two bit crook who'd barely whipped up a uniform in the course of pretending to have powers. "Kids?!" while walking through the kitchen with a clipboard taking inventory of what needed to be bought.

The others all knew to let him get it out of his system. If Robin had just started to fixate on something, trying to stop him then only got him more obsessed about whatever it was, no matter how tiny. It was like some sort of steam heat system of something that, once started, was going to build up to a certain pressure no matter what. Sometimes, for a gag, Beast Boy or Jinx would intentionally get Robin more wound up and he'd find himself shouting at the top of his lungs that, no, he would not increase each Titan's monthly allotment of paper clips!!

This particular jag had lasted from just after 10 in the morning, when Batman had appeared on the giant screen in the communications center with his offer, till lunch time. Finally, as everyone was sitting down for lunch, Kid Flash, who was sitting down for his second lunch that day, glanced around at the others with a raised eyebrow. What do you think? Now?

Raven nodded slightly as did Cyborg.

Kid Flash zipped over beside his pal, who was still muttering to himself while cutting up a sandwich on the counter beside the refrigerator.

"Um, Dick. Do you really need to cut that sandwich into thirty seconds?"

"Huh?"

Robin looked down at his handiwork as if seeing it for the first time.

"Um, small bites are better for you. More um more complete digestion that way."

"Uh huh. Listen," he began, putting an arm over his pal's shoulder. "I know you don't like the way the offer was made but we could use the League's old transporter. After all, not all of us are super speedsters who make a mockery of time and space."

"And good taste," added a voice from the table behind them just as Kid Flash was settling into a self-congratulatory grin. He looked over his shoulder and saw Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg all looking at Jinx who was eating her own sandwich with an expression of consummate innocence.

He turned back to Robin. "The team can use it," he continued while Robin popped one of thirty two sandwich squares into his mouth. A red gloved hand darted over and took five of them.

Robin glared. "Fine. Fine. We'll take their old static location transporter unit."

"Boo ya!" came a shout from the table behind them. "I can't wait to take apart all that sweet League tech."

"It's like getting a 14K dial up internet connection compared to their dsl line," grumbled Robin. "Their hand me downs! That's what we're getting, their hand me downs."

"What's this all about, little bat?" asked Jinx. "Your pride or doing the work?"

As the others all stared, Robin sighed and nodded. "You're right. You're right. We can use it. All the entry and destination tubes the League used to use are still there in every major city.

"Paris, for instance," suggested Jinx looking not at Robin but at Raven and Starfire. I can get there now," she said turning to Kid Flash, "but it's hell on my hair."

"It's not a toy for recreational use," complained Robin. "It's a serious device and every one of us is going to go through the 8 hour training course to be certified to use it."

Groans filled the room.

"Jeez Rob," chuckled Beast Boy. "That Wildcat dude was running it the last time I visited the League and he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed."

***

It was a few days before the machinery arrived at Titans Tower. It came in a couple refrigerator sized console pieces, both speckled with lights, and buttons and each with a display screen. And there were several thick cables of varying colors that connected to two different floor to ceiling see through tubes, with about a third of each tub cut out and with gray metal disks covering the tops and bottoms of the tubes.

Cyborg was in charge of the installation. Robin assisted him. The others all helped out a bit but not for very long. It took him a couple days. Finally, one morning at breakfast, he was grinning ear to ear, barely keeping from shouting the news out as everyone munched away.

"It's done! It's ready to go!" he announced when Kid Flash had finished washing everyone's dishes in a half second.

"Our transporter, friend Cyborg?"

"Yup. Our transporter . . !" he beamed.

He might have said 'our' but to the others it came out a lot like 'my' as he displayed the usual pride of ownership that he did with the T-Cars and everything about the Tower, shooing Beast Boy away from sitting on the console and refusing to let Starfire put her bowl of popped eyeballs popcorn anywhere on it.

He said they would demonstrate that every one of the 24 transporter tubes in the U.S. and around the world was working perfectly and synched up with the new Titans Tower location. Kid Flash interrupted him noting that Cyborg hadn't said anything about testing all of them. All 24 said Cyborg as Kid Flash grumbled about being taken for granted.

One after another, Kid Flash raced to some american or foreign city's police headquarters, or embassy building and then spoke to Cyborg on his communicator. First, as previously agreed, they put a single rose in a slender vase of water on the transporter platform of that city and Cyborg went through the initialization sequence, checked the display console and then, voila, a slender vase of water with a single red rose would start to appear in the air in the Tower's transporter tube. After about two seconds each time, it was fully there. Cyborg would call to Kid Flash on his communicator. "Success!" Kid Flash would step into the tube and then Cyborg would go through the initialization sequence, press a certain green button and Kid Flash would start to faintly appear in the transporter tube in the Tower.

It was like a magic act the first few times. The others, especially Starfire, applauded. By the tenth time, from Rome, the attention of the others was wandering. By the 15th time, from Tokyo, Raven had gone off to read, Jinx had taken T-Car2 off to her mother's farm in the hills outside Jump City and Starfire had flown off somewhere else. As Kid Flash was being zapped back from the 21st city, Sydney, a call came into the communications console from Interpol. Robin raced off to answer it and found himself assuring some international cop type that there was nothing to worry about. The reports of a costumed figure using the recently neglected Justice League transporter tubes was nothing to worry about. No no no! It was Kid Flash and the tubes were all connected to the Tower now. That's right -sigh- a sort of hand me down.

But, as usual with these things, a call that could have taken a minute took nearly a half hour as other officials got on the line and Robin had to read off multiple security clearance codes to prove that he was actually Robin. "Four nine two whiskey bravo delta six eight two five three one tango foxtrot eight nine two three . . . "

To Cyborg's surprise, the only Titan who stayed to the end was Beast Boy. The verdant shape shifter was watching more and more closely as Cyborg processed each transport till, by the next to last one, he thought he had pretty much mastered it. He moved to stand right beside Cyborg at one console and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"You wanna do one, BB?"

Beast Boy smiled. "Damn right. I wanna do this before Robin does and treat him the way he treats me when he shows me how to do something."

Cyborg chuckled. He knew what he meant.

"You think you know how to do it?"

"Sure. I've been watching you. It's easy."

"Oh, it's easy, huh? How do you start?"

Beast Boy reached forward. "First, you push that handle foward to the-"

Cyborg grabbed Beast Boy's hand, stopping him.

"First, you call Kid Flash and see if he's ready in Stockholm."

"Oh. Yeah. I knew that."

Beast Boy whipped out his communicator and pressed *KF. A second later, the screen showed Kid Flash's face.

"Gar? What's up?"

"What's up is I'm doing this next one."

Kid Flash's expression immediately betrayed anxiety.

"Uh, this thing's gonna take apart every molecule in my body, convert 'em to electromagnetic energy, and then put 'em back together half way across the world. I'd really rather Cyborg be in charge."

"Thanks a lot, Wally! Thanks for that vote of confidence. I thought you might treat me with a little respect but maybe all that hanging around with Robin's rubbing off on you. Thanks for the positive reinforcement, speedster. Thanks a lot. I-"

"Fine! Fine, Gar! Do it!"

Cyborg peeked his head over Beast Boy's shoulder. "I'll be supervising him, Wally."

Kid Flash was seen sighing and nodding contentedly.

"Okay! The rose first!" shouted Beast Boy.

Kid Flash stepped forward in one of the restricted access rooms in the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm and placed the vase with the still fresh rose in the transporter tube.

"Ready."

"Okay," said Beast Boy under his breath as he turned and stared at the console full of controls again.

Step by step, Cyborg questioned Beast Boy and one after another, Beast Boy called out the correct sequence of 8 steps finishing with "Check the console display for error messages annnnnnnnnnnd . . there aren't any so . . start, right?"

Cyborg nodded. Beast Boy pressed the green button the console flashed a whole series of messages too fast to read about the status of the process and then the slender vase and rose started to appear in the transporter tube. And then they were there.

"Boo yah, Greenie! Good job!" Cyborg high fived the shape shifter knocking the 155 pounder back in the process.

Beast Boy grimaced and rubbed that hand on his hip then pressed *KF on his communicator with his other hand and eagerly shouted "Success".

"Okay, I'm in the tube," said Kid Flash.

Cyborg again stood beside Beast Boy and had him call out each step before executing it.

". . check the console display for error messages . . none . . so start annnnnnnd"

Beast Boy pressed the green button and a momen later a shimmering version of Kid Flash started to appear in the transporter tube. A second later, Kid Flash was there. He ran out of the tube and patted Beast Boy on the back. So did Cyborg, lightly.

Kid Flash pulled out a piece of paper from under one red glove and pronounced, "Okay . . next up . . Nairobi." A second later, he was gone, no doubt sprinting half way around the world. Cyborg had considered sending Kid Flash out on the transporter from the Tower to another city at a couple locations after successfully pulling him back to the Tower. But they wanted to let him make sure there were no problems at each transporter tube before trying anything, so he had to sprint out to each city first.

A few seconds later, he was in the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and pressed *BB on his communicator. "I'm here, Gar. I'll put the flower in now."

Like clockwork, Beast Boy operated the controls, calling out each step before executing it, even though he practically felt like a child being asked to read off the alphabet at this point.

Voila, flower!

Voila, Wally!

Cyborg nodded like a proud father or at least older brother at Gar's deft handling of the transporter controls and Kid Flash sprinted out to the last city, Paris.

"Way to go pretty boy."

Gar half scowled and half smiled. He wanted to be angry at being called that but he loved being six feet tall now and considered model material. He was still trying to scowl more when Robin called Cyborg from the communications center on the other side of the 14th floor, something about the Justice League having sent in a code message officially saying all the static location transporter tubes were off line but that they hadn't sent interpol a re-activate message in code.

Cyborg shook his head in disgust and marched off muttering something about bullshit protocols but stopping at the doorway to ask Beast Boy, "You got this under control?"

The shape shifter nodded, his expression almost offended. Cyborg marched off to find Robin and just as Beast Boy returned his gaze to the transporter console, Kid Flash checked in on the communicator. "I'm here in Paris, but, um, there was a squall over the Atlantic. I dropped the flower and the vase. Could we just wrap this up, just zap me."

"Sure," said Beast Boy.

"I'm ready," said Kid Flash.

And then Beast Boy's communicator sounded that particular low tone beep that meant it was a call from outside that had been given special reroute status by the Titan recipient. Beast Boy's eyes lit up. He cleared his throat and adopted his most suave, double oh Logan, tone of voice.

"Gar Logan, male model, here."

***&&&%%%$$$###

Paris was different.

Unlike all the other countries, the French wouldn't let the Justice League put a transporter tube in the American Embassy. They insisted that it be put in police headquarters, the Surete's headquarters. They couldn't actually have done anything if the League had simply set up the transporter tube in the embassy but they made a big squawk that the League wasn't supposed to be aligned with any particular country. Batman wanted to put it in a McDonald's on the Champs Elysee at that point but Superman and some others outvoted him and agreed to the French terms.

Kid Flash saw that the address in Paris wasn't the embassy but Surete Headquarters, but thought nothing of it. What could ever happen in a police headquarters building?

Red X grinned beneath his skull mask. Was there any place in the world easier to rob than a police station? Every fat deskbound doughnut eater, oops, croissant eater, thought that a bunch more lazy lard asses like him guaranteed the safety of these places. What a frigging joke! As yet another fat gendarme waddled past, he shook his head. Note to self. Put a bullet in your head if you ever allow yourself to get anywhere near that overweight. God! What good is a cop that fat? To protect and to marinate! God.

If you were a high end jeweler who had a diamond worth several million dollars like, say, the panthere rose diamond, you had the damn door knob sized thing in a safe inside a vault behind locked gates, motion detection systems, vibration detection systems, multiple 24/7/365 security cameras and guards patrolling at irregular intervals outside the place. You put some work into protecting your $14.7 million diamond.

Even then, a top notch guy like Litton might spend weeks timing the guards, and coming up with work arounds to get past all the other systems and drill your vault and safe doors to make off with the thing.

Red X smiled beneath his skull mask. Litton. He liked his work. He'd worked with him on that Berlin job. What a sweet swipe that was!

But even a pro like Litton who worked with other people could get screwed by those other people fucking up. Red X nodded to himself as another slack faced gendarme walked right past him, nearly elbowing him in his oh so toned abs without seeing him.

Gotta love the cloaking feature.

Some idiot who barely did anything for Litton, sat in a freaking car outside for god's sake, got nabbed and a day later the stupid french cops had the diamond. They didn't get Litton but they got the huge chunk of ice from its temporary hiding place.

Never gonna happen to me, Red X reiterated to himself. I am always working alone. Always.

But cops didn't protect things like top end jewelers or banks did. They had the diamond in a safe any idiot safe cracker could beat in a minute. They thought it couldn't be taken because it was in this building with all these gendarmes including one leaning on the counter at the lockup.

Red X smiled under his mask, recalling how he walked right in past the guy at the counter, with the cloaking feature of his suit on. Oh, it had taken him a minute to open the Surete's safe at the back of the room. He'd tell that to the old safe cracker who gave him lessons. He could hear him now. "A minute to crack a St. Pierre 621?! What were you doin', scratching yer balls for 45 seconds?!?!" Ahhh, the old guy was fun to talk to. What a great guy. Not like those NSA assholes.

Red X smirked under his skull mask as a couple more gendarmes went right past him in the hallway. Oh, how fun it would be talking to spook number one and spook number two. It was loads of fun playing innocent with them, especially right after a performance, still in costume. That really freaked them out, that they coudn't intimidate a guy dressed like that. Why couldn't they wait, anyway? They had to talk to him while he was still a prince?

You did that! You did that and we know it! We know it! Don't bullshit us, Lee! You did it and we're not gonna stand for it!

"Did what? What are you talking about?"

Everyone's part was as ritualized as kabuki theater by now. We didn't give you carte blanche to do whatever you want, Lee! You've done some great work for us, Lee, but we weren't trying to let some kind of super thief loose on the world! We've gotta bring you in!

"Nope. And don't try and make a move on me section chief Carreker. This conversation's been recorded, too. Anything happens to me . . "

"Why, you pretty boy son of a bitch!

" . . the same 6 lawyers, whose names you don't know, will-"

"You pretty boy son of a bitch. We made you. We set you up! We-"

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Red X tired of recalling and predicting the never changing argument. He winked one eye and the time, 5:07, showed in red on the inside of the right side lens of his mask, invisible to the gendarmes still waddling past. Cops were fat everywhere. A few more minutes and the change of shift congestion of the hallways would be over and he could jog right out of this place with the panthere rose diamond.

And then the gendarme with the dog came by. Red X gritted his teeth. He was a cat person. Could the stupid mutt tell there was a cat person there when he couldn't see anything. He sure smelled something, though. He had his nose lifted and almost pressed to Red X's crotch. Then the damn dog started growling and barking. And just as Fido was really going nuts, the alarm sounded. Gendarmes started waddling frantically in every direction.

It still seemed like escape would be easy till that especially fat one with a platter in his hand, came toward them, making his way down the hallway. Red X shook his invisibly cloaked head looking at the guy. Bouillabaisse was supposed to be in two separate platters. This fat slob cop had it all in one, one big messy fish stew. You're a poor excuse for a frenchman, Pierre.

But if Red X had contempt for the guy's culinary sense it paled in comparison to his feelings about the guy's clumsiness. He tripped and slammed into the gendarme with the dog and threw the whole platter of bouillabaisse onto X. Now, there was something to back up the dog's psycho reaction. There was the outline of a slender athletic guy where there had apparently been no one standing there.

This was too obvious even for cops to miss. "Sacre bleu! Qu'est-ce que c'est?!"

A couple of them dove at him but X jumped over them, so much more agile than them, and started sprinting down the hallway. One of them blew his whistle and shouted for the others to stop the "invisible thief in bouillabaisse". X punched out one in his way then another. The fish stew was over his chest and torso, a bit onto his thighs but not his hands so his fists were invisible. He started down a set of stairs to the main exit but someone pressed some sort of alarm and the doors slammed shut just before he got there. He was about to throw an exploding X at the door when he was jumped by a couple cops each from the hallways to the left and right of the exit. He fought them off, invisible fists again quite handy in a fight but a dozen more were coming. He realized that it would be smarter to leave somewhere else where they weren't all waiting for him. He raced back up the stairs, easily faster than a couple cops chasing him and a glance downward told him that some of the bouillabaisse had come off in the course of fighting. He ducked into a men's room and turned on the tap, C for hot, and frantically splashed water over his uniform. He wiped himself with a towel and checked in the mirror.

Almost perfect. A few more seconds and the water would dry and he'd be invisible again. Outside, he could hear cops feverishly talking. "He's in there," he heard them say in french and then some other things to get their courage up.

A few seconds after, bam, they came busting into the bathroom, five of them. They looked and looked but didn't see him. Then they began waving and kicking their arms around, hoping to find the master thief by a lucky swing but found nothing. He got out into the hall! They brought the dog forward and the mutt pulled steadily at his master's leash, leading them all down one hallway then to the left down another then to a window. The dog stopped and barked. They all swung their clubs in the air but no one hit anything. One opened the window and looked out. It was some twenty feet across to the administration building and three stories down to the parking area below. Just as he glanced to one side of the parking lot, a motorcycle sped away.

"He's on a motorcycle!" the gendarme shouted, leading the others down the hall to the radio room to call in squad cars.

At the window across the way in the administration building, Red X looked at the unfortunate motorcyclist speeding away. Sorry guy. Your night's ruined but mine got a lot better.

He turned around and looked at his surroundings with a sniff. He didn't like seeing "League de Justice" in part of the sign over the door to the room as another fat french cop, this one a plainclothesman, swung it open then closed it. But there weren't any Justice League types here so it didn't matter what the damn sign said. Only just a second later, a yellow and red blur came right through the frigging door. It didn't open. He came right through it. X backed away a step. He'd been run into and knocked out by Zippy Carrottop before. He wasn't about to let that happen again. But the kid just kept walking right for him even while saying hello to the plainclothes cop. And then, X realized that he'd backed almost into the opening of some kind of weird floor to ceiling tube. And then Kid Flash took another step right at him, obviously not seeing him but in danger of blowing his cover. X backed into the tube and flattened himself against the wall of it to not touch Kid Flash. Zippy was on his communicator now, telling Beast Boy to get a move on.

And now X realized what this was, a transporter tube, a Justice League transporter tube. Well, hell, he didn't want to got to either Titans Tower or to the Justice League satellite. They seemed to be remarkably unappreciative of his witty personality and spirit of adventure in both those places. He slid along the curve of the tube and was just about to jump out to one side when he was blinded by white light and felt a paralyzing but not painful warmth pass through his body.

***###%%%***

"Gar Logan, male model here."

"Monsieur Lo-gan you are ze famous Boy Beast, yes?"

"That's me."

"Wiss ze skin green?"

"Yeah, that's me?"

A short burst of static came from Beast Boy's communicator as a Titan transmission got precedence over an outside transmission and the green teen heard an insistent voice. "Gar? Are you ready? How 'bout it?"

"Just a second, KF!" groaned Beast Boy and he pressed one of the buttons twice to give the other call temporary precedence.

As he continued speaking on the private line, he started pressing the buttons and moving the levers to execute the transporter process.

"I am Jean Paul Gaultier. Monsieur Lo-gan. And I would like you to appear in ze show fashion ex-eebiting my new line next month in ze Jump Ceetee. Ees that okay weeth you?"

Beast Boy pushed the process initiation lever forward to the green line as the man spoke then pressed the number 1 on the console. One subject coming back.

"Sure, I'm interested. I enjoy working the catwalk. Ever since that Prada show early last year I've done a show a season," drawled Beast Boy pressing the buttons for transmission subject scan and conversion algorithm processing. He looked at his reflection in the dark glass of the adjacent computer monitor. He fluffed his hair ever so slightly. Mirrors and reflecting surfaces interested him so much more since the growth spurt that left him a full 6 feet tall and with a face, well, one designer said he could have worked the catwalk even if he hadn't been green. He ws a bit embarassed at how scrawny he was, but so were most of the other male models. What a bunch of wimps!

"But I want to be clear that I'm not walking out there with half my butt uncovered like I had to at that D and G show last season. No half speedos, no thongs, no pubic jeans, none of that stuff."

"Oh, mon dieu! A show is supposed to be fuuuuuuuuuun, Monsieur Lo-gan! Don't be so . . 'ow you say? Up-tight."

A series of messages flashed by on the transporter's console screen. As all the previous times, they flashed by too quick for anyone but, perhaps, Kid Flash to read and all the other times, these messages had been harmless. They followed a certain set pattern, almost a shape of the light displays rather than predictable words, the lines went by so fast. But the shape of the lights was a bit different this time. Beast Boy shrugged and pressed the conveyance connection initiatiion button as he checked out his reflection again.

"Hey, Jean Paul. I'm literally green but not figuratively, okay? I know that the top models get to have some say in this stuff. I'm not a regular on the circuit. I've obviously got a regular job but if you want me you have to agree to my terms," said Beast Boy and he pressed the status assessment button on the console. The machine hummed louder. In fact, it seemed louder than it had during any of the other transports.

But it barely registered. After a few sacre bleus and trust mes, Jean Paul had caved in and now they were negotiating Beast Boy's fee for the modeling. So, he barely noticed the blur of messages on the console.

ezq793inconsistentsubjectnumberalgorithmoptionassessmenthierarchyezq793

ezq794zrqdefaultchoice-one-singlecortextransferranceproductmassprimacymethodzrq111ezq794

ezq795qrztwo-multicortextransferrancecombinedproducthighdensitymethodqrzezq795

ezq796rzqthree-nocortextransferrancesubjectnumberoperatoroverridemethodrzqezq796

ezq797rqzfour-doublecortextransferrancesubjectnumberoperatoroverridemethodrqzezq797

The much more numerous messages didn't totally escape Beast Boy's notice but when he looked down at the console, after issuing his "final offer" to the fashion designer, the spate of messages flitting across the screen were the same ones about the system checking it's power. He shrugged, nothing to worry about, and checked out his reflection again as the fashion designer pleaded for some understanding. Beast Boy knew he had him and said nothing, just waited him out. Meanwhile another flurry of unusual messages zipped by.

ezq1127transportersubject1-mass168lbsphysicalreconfigurationstatus-primary1ezq1127

ezq1128newtransportersubject-mass167lbsphysicalreconfigurationstatus-subordinateezq1128

ezq1129newtransportersubjectphysicalreconfigurationstatusabeyanceinelectromagneticreservoirezq1128

ezq1130cortexprimacystatusalternatingover10000secondperiodezq1130

Beast Boy looked down again, saw something odd about 10000 seconds. Hmm, never saw that one before. But then the console was prompting him in the usual way to press the final button to begin initiation of transport. He decided it had probably shown those messages before but he just hadn't noticed. He stabbed impatiently at the final button. Just as he did, Jean Paul Gaultier caved in and agreed to pay Beast Boy what he wanted. Beast Boy smiled as he hung up and watched an image start to shimmer in transporter tube. Kid Flash. But then, for a second, Beast Boy almost thought he saw another image there at the same time. He blinked. Him? Huh?

But, no. There was only Wally.

"Success!" shouted Beast Boy as Kid Flash stepped out of the transporter tube. But Wally wasn't quite so effervescent this time. He sniffed and grimaced a second.

"What?" asked Beast Boy.

"Probably nothing I just feel, I don't know, congested, I guess," said Kid Flash stopping beside Gar.

"So what?"

"Gar I have to guess what it's like. I've never been congested a day in my life. I feel like . . like I've got a head cold or something," he explained.

Beast Boy's eyes darted left and right. "Hey, I did it right. Don't go telling the others I did anything wrong. You know how Dick is about shit like that."

_Unnnh! What the hell?!_ A groan reverberated inside Kid Flash's head. A groan in a whole different voice.

"Did you hear that?" he said to Beast Boy.

"Hear what?"

"That voice!"

"What voice?"

"That groan."

"Wally, all I hear is you and me talking about nothing."

Kid Flash sighed, obviously not happy but not sure what to do. "I-I must've imagined it. I'm-I'm going down to my room," he said and sprinted off to the hall then down the stairs to the 13th floor and then vibrated through the door of his and Jinx's room.

He wanted to agree that he had just imagined it but that head cold feeling was still there. He never got colds, especially not after he got super speed. He could only guess at what it was like based on what Dick and others told him. Was this what he was feeling?

_Oh, what the fucking fuck is going on?_

Kid Flash jumped. There it was again! Clear as a bell, that same voice!

He had an idea. He zipped over to Jinx's desk. She had a micro-recorder that she sometimes used to record thoughts that occurred to her while reading or at other times. "Note to self . . ", that sort of thing. He zipped back in front her three sided mirror with the recorder in one hand. There was something about the incredible clarity of that voice. How could Gar not hear it?

_Why do I feel so funny? What's with my reflection? Where am I? Why can't I . . ?_

At a rate that only super speed fingers could, Kid Flash hit the buttons to stop the record function, rewind and then play the last 15 seconds of recording back. He heard nothing.

He looked around in the air of the room.

"Whoever you are, come out where I can see you!"

_What the hell did you do to me, carrot top?_

Kid Flash looked frantically around the room. "Where are you?! Who . . who are you?! Come out in the open!" He whipped around at super speed before finally stopping and slowly approaching Jinx's three sided mirror, the kind you find in high class stores' changing rooms. He approached the center mirrored panel, a new possibility slowly dawning on him.


	2. Do I need an exorcism?

Kid Flash warily approached the three sided full length mirror in his and Jinx's room. He stepped so close that his nose was almost touching the glass. He tried to look deep into his own eyes.

_What the hell are you doing, Zippy?_

"I'm looking for you," he muttered, then sighed at the ridiculousness of the situation. He shook his head before resuming staring into his own irises, tilting his head slightly to one side then the other. Nothing. This is crazy. What's next, I ask for an exoricsm?

_Yo mama sews socks that smell!_

"What?!?!?! What'd you say?" pleaded Kid Flash to the voice in his head. Now it was sounding demonic. Oh god.

_Calm down Zippy. I was just fuckin' with ya. Haven't you seen that old SNL clip on youtube?_

Just as Kid Flash was about to stop looking, he thought, for an instant, that he saw a face, a different face in his own iris. A young guy, handsome, with dark hair and light brown eyes. What the hell's happening? Is there really someone else inside my . . my head?

_Sure looks that way, doesn't it?_

"How-how do you know what I'm thinking?!" Kid Flash demanded of the empty room, glancing upward left and right.

_Where do you think I am, in the plaster of the ceiling or something? You'd be better off going back to looking in the mirror. I'm not interested in looking at the ceiling._

"Look, I don't know what kind of spirit you are but, please, just . . get out of me. Leave me. Be-Begone!" he said with a theatrical wave of his arm.

_Believe me, I'd love to, Zippy. I'm not in control of this ride. I was thinking of spending the evening on the Champs Elysee with a certain ballerina, not stuck inside some dude's head._

"You sound familiar," said Kid Flash speaking aloud again to an empty room.

_There's a good reason for that. But before we go into that, I've gotta say, this suit feels ridiculously tight. What are you, the last survivor of disco or something?_

Kid Flash looked self-consciously down at his skin tight red and yellow uniform and at his reflection in the mirror. "What? I'm a Flash. We have to wear tight uniforms. It's to eliminate friction," he explained then sighed. "What am I doing? Wait, did you say 'feels'? Did you say, my Kid Flash suit feels ridiculously tight?"

_That's right, Zippy._

"How would you know?"

_Uh . . because whatever you did to me's left me feeling everything you feel, seeing everything you see cetera cetera, except I CAN'T CONTROL ANYTHING!_

"Well, why should you be able to control my body?" asked Kid Flash aloud and running red gloved hands down his sides, reinforcing the words "my body".

_Well, just what the flying fuck happened to MY body?!_

"How should I know? I was just being the guinea pig used to test our new transporter system, the League's old one. Then, after the Paris test I start hearing you in my head."

_Well, which Spiff Spandex was running the damn machine?_

"Beast Boy."

_Oh._

Oh. Yeah.

Kid Flash sighed and tried to suppress a scowl. Beast Boy. He sighed again. Don't act like Dick about this, he reminded himself. Don't act like Dick.

And with that, he sprinted off, vibrating through the door of his own room, fifty feet down the hall to Beast Boy's room and then through the door of Beast Boy's room. The green teen was lying on his bed reading one of the Twilight books.

"Oh god, Gar. Really?" said Kid Flash suddenly materializing in front of his teammate.

_Pathetic_, seconded the voice in his head.

Beast first tried to hide the book then barked, "You're supposed to knock, speedster!"

"Twilight, Gar? Those books are total shit, total steaming donkey dumps, Gar."

"Chicks dig 'em, Wally!"

_Wally?! Hahaha! Wally!?_

Beast Boy saw Kid Flash make an odd face. "They're incredibly poorly written Gar. You're so much smarter than that. I thought you were gonna try those Elmore Leonard books and those old Len Deighton spy things Jinx recommended."

"I am!" protested the green teen now sitting up on the edge of his bed. "I just . . . well, all these girls outside the last fashion show where I modeled had these t-shirts and things about this Twilight thing. I thought I should check it out. It . . it is kind of dumb. The chick just goes on and on about how hot this guy is and I'm like, okay, I got that. Move on. And she's like so, I don't know . . "

_Passive_

"Passive?" suggested Kid Flash echoing the voice in his head.

"Yeah! Exactly. It's so weird, to read about a girl being like that with, you know, Raven and Jinx and Starfire and Wonder Girl and Pantha around us."

"Just," Kid Flash sighed. "Just . . find yourself a smarter girl than one caught up in that Twilight shit, Gar. Even the girls who like that are gonna look back in a year or two and think of it as this childish phase they went through."

_You're just saying that cuz you don't sparkle . . Wally!_

Again, Beast Boy saw Kid Flash make an odd face, out of nowhere. Beast Boy frowned back. What?

"Gar, the reason I came here is that something went wrong with the last transport, the one from Paris."

"What? You look like the same old Wally to me."

_Hahaha . . . Wally._

Another odd face. "Gar, my body's fine. But there's . . there's someone else in my head."

"What?"

"Did you zap someone through with me?"

_Someone really cool?_

Odd face.

"Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Making faces like that."

"Because the guy you zapped into my head keeps saying things to me!"

Beast Boy's eyes went big. "Oh my god. Are you sure it's a guy? Maybe it's a fly! Maybe there was a fly in the transporter tube, just like in that movie, The Fly, and it spliced your genes with fly genes and you're gonna turn into a fly! You're gonna turn into a fly, Wally!"

The changeling leaped to his feat and then turned into a fly, buzzing around Kid Flash before finally turning back into his human self, frantically shaking his head back and forth. "I hate that morph!"

"I'm not turning into a fly, Gar!" Kid Flash shouted, giving his teammate a slap on the shoulder. "But I've got someone else's consciousness in my head along with mine," he said tapping the decorative wing on one side of his head. You-you messed up the transport somehow."

Beast Boy's expression crashed into defensive embarassment. "How-how do you know it was my fault?"

"Gar. My job was just to stand there. I think I did my part."

Beast Boy's posture was getting worse by the second and his ears were sprouting up into full jackass ears. "Oh god. Dick'll never let me hear the end of this. You can't be trusted, Garfield! You can't be relied on, Garfield! You can't . . ! Oh god."

He slumped down onto his bed but Kid Flash pulled him back up to his feet.

"Come on, Gar! Pull yourself together! You're the one who led the comeback against the Brotherhood of Evil."

_What were the odds?_

Odd face.

"Gar. I won't tell Dick about this. But you've gotta find out what happened and how things went wrong. You were the one at the controls."

Beast Boy nodded. He stood up straighter. His ears shrank back down from full jackass size to normal length hidden under his now collar length long hair.

"There were some messages that seemed . . different," he said softly.

"Messages?"

"The transporter . . when you go through the process, it flashes all these messages at you faster than anyone could possible read, I mean, what's the point in displaying 'em. And . . "

Kid Flash stared at him.

"Fine! You could read 'em but no one else. You see, like, a hundred lines of message text go by and it's almost like you get used to a shape moving across the screen, a bunch of long lines then a few short ones, then some more long ones, than the actual text. It was . . different on that last one. The shapes were different."

"So . . something different happened."

"Yeah. Um, do you know who it is that got, um, totally accidentally zapped into your head?"

"Who are you?" demanded Kid Flash, aloud. "Who are you?"

The voice in his head snickered. _I'm Red X, Zippy._

Kid Flash closed his eyes as he sighed. His face dropped into one hand. "It's Red X, Gar," he mumbled. "Red X."

Beast Boy's ears shot up out of his long hair to full jackass size. "Well, where's his body?"

"That's a good question. Right now, he's sharing mine. And I don't like it."

_How do you think I feel, Zippy? I was an owner and now I rent._

Kid Flash sighed. "You have to do this, Gar. We can't let Red X learn all the secrets of transporter technology. You have to figure out what went wrong. Anything I see, Red X sees, so we don't want to let him anywhere near the operations manual or the technical specs of the transporter. It's gotta be you, Gar."

"You promise you won't tell Dick?"

"I promise. But, um, where's Cy?"

"Some kind of robotics expo and seminar in Steel City. He'll be back late tomorrow."

Kid Flash stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Beast Boy's shoulders. "You can do this, Gar. You're a smart guy. Just figure out what we have to do to fix this."

_Jesus, I thought you were gonna squeeze his green ass, too. Are you guys always this homoerotic?_

"Shut up! We're not . . ! I mean . . "

"Wally?" Beast Boy looked distressed.

Kid Flash shook his head. "Just . . just Red X saying shit, Gar. Please figure out what happened. I don't want Dick to have to know that I have Red X inside me. He'll throw one of his little bat fits."

Gar nodded resolutely as Kid Flash disappeared from his room, a red and yellow blur that went straight into his door and out. The changeling took a couple breaths that horrible feeling of humiliation, of being the stupid little fuckup was still somewhere there in the background. But Wally was so much easier to work with than Dick, always 'you're smarter than that, Gar' instead of 'do you ever not screw up?' or all that shit Dick always says. He didn't make you feel like a jackass because you couldn't do something just the way he would.

Gar gathered himself with a sigh and marched through the hallway and up the stairs to 14 where the transporter had been installed. There, on top of the console was the inch thick operations manual. Gar leafed through it for several minutes before finally finding a reference to "Troubleshooting". It refered him to the "Technical Manual". Gar flipped over the soft bound book. What's this? Oh. Operations Manual. Well, where's the . . ?

He looked around to the left side of the machine, the height, depth and width of three ovens in a normal kitchen. Nothing. He looked around to the right side. Nothing. Hmm. There weren't any drawers to pull out of the damn thing. There weren't any shelves above it. Where could . . oh no!

Beast Boy spun around and saw 4 immense, foot thick three ring bound books on a table in a corner of the room. He approached them with a whimper as he saw the titles on them. Technical Manual Volume 1. Technical Manual Volume 2. Technical Manual Volume 3. Technical Manual Volume 4.

His ears morphed into those of a jackass and shot up through his stylishly coiffed long hair. But as intimidated as he was, the green teen pulled up a chair and gave it his best effort. He read 400 pages that night, getting a fifth of the way through the first manual. But the terminology was incredibly dense, a combination of quantum mechanics, special relativity and advanced circuitry plus a dash of J'onn J'onnz's martian science. The more Gar read, the less he felt he knew, the more humiliated he felt. After a hundred pages, he was scratching incessantly at his lower back till finally a jackass tail grew there and slipped out the velcro between his uniform top and bottom. After 200 pages, his face started slowly stretching outward, getting more and more like the shape of a donkey's. And he stopped at 400 pages both due to mental exhaustion and because his hands had gradually morphed into cloven hoofs, making the pages hard to turn. Gar jumped at the sight of his reflection in the night time window beside the table. Green jackass face with big bristly ears and a tail from over his shoulder.

"Aaaah!"

He shook his head, like a dog shaking water off himself and he was back to his normal form. Those jackass elements happened less and less to him now, but if he was seriously embarassed, especially for an extended period of time, he found himself subconsciously changing forms bit by bit. He trudged back to his room muttering to himself. "Hope Wally's doin' okay controlling Red X."

He wasn't.


	3. Dealing with Red X

Kid Flash sped out of Beast Boy's room, vibrating his molecules right through the door.

_I always wondered how you did that. You just start contracting your ab muscles and let the vibration spread through you, huh?_

"Yeah," said Kid Flash with no enthusiasm. He didn't like Red X knowing anything about him. When he stopped to consider his next move, his stomache rumbled.

_When's the last time we ate?_

"We? We?! It's me. It's my body, not yours, mine!" he said glancing quickly down the hall to see if any other Titans were coming or had heard him apparently talking to himself. Thank god. No one. "Almost three hours ago," he added in a mutter then zipped down the hall, up the stairs to the 14th floor and to the kitchen in a half second. He strode casually across the tile floor and opened the giant, stainless steel front refrigerator.

Hmm. Hmm. As always, it all looked so good to the speedster. He wasn't very picky about food. But Jinx had said something about some new items, a meat loaf and a french beef thing, what was it? The one where it cooked in wine? Ah, yes, beef bourguignon. He bent over to inspect the lower shelves of food, pushing one of Gar's tofu things out of the way, when suddenly he felt a hand.

"Ahh!" He jumped just as he heard Starfire's giggle.

"Hello friend Wally!"

_Haha. So . . does she goose you often?_

Kid Flash turned half angrily to the tamaranian. Did she have to do that now, of all times, with him . . watching?! But his demeanor made no impression on her and she giggled again as she ran her hand through his orange hair.

"Not now, Star!" he moaned as he heard a snickering super thief in his head.

_Ha. She totally wants you, Zippy._

"I am sorry, friend Wally. But you know how much we tamaraneans adore orange hair."

Kid Flash sighed. It was hard to stay mad at Starfire.

"And also-"

This time he swatted her hand away before it got near his hips.

"Star! I'm hungry! Let me-"

"You are always hungry, friend Wally," she smiled.

_Totally._

Kid Flash sighed and, thankfully, the situation defused itself he retrieved the casserole dish with the meatloaf and another with some vegetables and microwaved the whole thing up, easily enough food for two. He brought it over to one of the tables and glanced around. Star had gotten something to drink and gone back to her room. He glanced around one more time then ate ravenously at super speed. He licked the plate and then let out a resounding burp when Red X spoke again.

_Damn. That feels good. I noticed you didn't want the others to see you eat like that. You . . you feel like a freak, don't you?_

"A bit."

_Even more than just being called 'Wally'? Hahahahahahahahahaha! Oh man, that kills me. No wonder you wear a mask. You're hiding because your name is Wally._

"It's not that bad!"

_Wally . . West in fact. Holy shit, cutesy alliteration too._

"How do you . . "

_I'm looking at your driver's license photo right now Zippy._

"How . . ?" Kid Flash could see it in his thoughts now, too.

_Damn, what a picture. That DMV really fucked you over. If you ever get pulled over, try to make a face like a retard so that they think you look the same as always._

Kid Flash gritted his teeth and sprinted back to his room and vibrated through the door. How the hell did Red X call up one of my memories, he wondered.

_I don't know, Zippy. I don't do this thing all the time, you know._

Kid Flash sighed. All his thoughts were audible too. This was terrible. He felt almost weak in the knees with distress about being so exposed to him so it was just as well that he sat down at the desk in his and Jinx's room and turned on the computer resolving to try to take logical action. He was trying search terms in the case files directory to see if any mission had involved a situation like this. Maybe one of the other Titans had gotten out of something like this!

"Villain in my body" . . . No search results.

"Transporter mishap" . . . No search results.

"Master thief sharing my brain" . . . No search results.

"Villain's consciousness transfered into me" . . . No search results.

"Villain inside my head" . . .

At last! 37 results!

But then he checked them out. All 37 results were instances of the other Titans wondering if Slade had gotten inside Robin's head in a metaphorical sense.

_Yeah. Robin. Let's see, what happens if I wonder about Robin's secret identity._

"No! Don't!"

But despite Kid Flash's shout, he heard Robin's voice the time that he first told him his real name. " . .Dick Grayson . .". Red X started laughing.

_Ahahahaha! Dick Grayson? DICK Grayson?! Oh god. How perfect is that, that the little dick's name is actually Dick! Ahahahahaha! And let's see, what else do you know about him . . ?_

"No! Please! He's a terrific guy underneath it all. He's . . emotionally limited . . because he's had a really hard life and-"

_Ha! A circus acrobat?! A freaking boy circus acrobat? Jesus, that's just a clown up on a rope instead of down in the sawdust. A circus acrobat?! No wonder I never lose to him. Our training's a thousand times better than that repetitive, limited crap. Oh god, maybe this wasn't so bad after all._

"Look," Kid Flash nearly growled pushing the chair back from the desk. "He's my best friend. And he went through hell, losing his parents and then dealing with Batman. Sure, he's a little compulsive, but-"

_A little?! At the OCD conventions he's the one who goes back to check that everyone else's stoves and irons were turned off._

"He'd give his life for any of us."

_Yeah, right after he made yours miserable. God, a circus acrobat, a freakin' carnie. He teach you guys how to run rigged games on the midway as part of your training?_

"Shut up, you asshole! He's a better man than you!"

_Maybe per inch of height. Now let's see, Zippy, what else do you know about your team. Starfire?_

"No. Come on, don't do that!"

But Kid Flash didn't seem to have any way to stop him. However it was that the transporter had somehow wired their minds together inside his head, it had left Red X with just as much ability to recall his memories as he had. Words and images pertaining to Starfire cascaded through his thoughts.

"No!" he moaned as he staggered over to their bed and fell back on it. Red X was methodically going through all of his memories, all of his knowledge of his fellow Titans. For Red X, it was a bit like using a search engine hooked up to a single data base, all the recollections of Wally West.

_Beast Boy is . . Garfield Logan . . . Cyborg is . . Victor Stone . . . Raven is . . Rachel Roth . . . Starfire is . . Koriandr' from Tamaran . . . Jinx is . . Virginia Murphy_

"No! Leave her alone!"

_Haha! Your concern is touching, carrot top. Speedy is . . Roy Harper . . . Aqualad is . . Garth Poseidon, prince of Atlantis . . . Bumblebee is . . hey, you really don't know her full name, only Karen._

"Some of the others might now her full name. I don't," Kid Flash said listlessly.

_And you know that Mas and Menos are . . Manuel and Miguel Sanchez from Guatemala, hmmph. Probably only thousands of those. And-_

"Why are you doing this?!"

_Put yourself in my shoes, Zippy. All this information just sitting here in your head. Should I just ignore it?_

"What are you gonna do with it?" muttered Kid Flash sighing limply, not sure what the answer would be but knowing that no good could come of the super thief knowing all about his friends and teammates.

_I honestly don't know yet, speedster. But it's certainly a valuable commodity, don't you agree?_

Kid Flash sighed limply. "Please don't hurt my friends. Please."

_Christ. I'm just a voice in your head, Zippy. You talk like I'm the one with all the leverage. I'm the one whose body is missing and who's relying on fricking Beast Boy . . Garfield Logan to you and me, haha, to find it and get me back to it. I'm just getting myself a little insurance._

Kid Flash sat up with an angry expression. "Oh yeah? Oh yeah! Well . . well-"

_I know where you're going with this, Zippy. I'm in your head, remember? Don't even try._

"What if we just get rid of you, zap you out of my head into nothing?"

_Are you threatening to kill me, Zippy?_

"Well . . "

_Hahaha. You can't even say it. I'd take the threat half seriously coming from Dick the little dick, but everyone knows about you, Zippy. Do you think I don't watch the news or even check out youtube clips? All those times trying to let crooks avoid the ass kicking they deserved. Everybody knows you're too nice a guy for that._

"I killed Slade," said Kid Flash, some actual steel in his voice this time.

_Uh, wait, let me recall that one . . . yeah, I see it now . . . Slade threatening Jinx's life for the dozenth time before you could make yourself do anything like that. So, spare me the fake threats. That's not you and I know it. I'm inside your fucking head fer chrissakes. But how 'bout this? I'll ignore your friends and concentrate on you. Hmmm?_

Kid Flash could only sigh helplessly. He couldn't stop him anyway. But Red X seemed to be rubbing his nose in it, recalling all Wally's worst humiliations.

_Times I was humiliated . ._

And with the thought came memories of such times. And Red X would have some sort of related thought. And the next year? In school? At home? Etc. . . bringing forth other recollections at which he'd laugh. There was the time in third grade when some bullies had grabbed Wally at recess and wouldn't let him go when he needed to use the bathroom till he'd pissed his pants in front of most of his class. There were all the instances of his mother punishing him, mostly undeservedly, bending him over her knee and taking a hairbrush to his backside. There was the girl he was supposed to take on a date in 7th grade whom he'd stood up to answer a call and who had walked over to him in the cafeteria and poured a pint of milk over his head. There was the time his sister had caught him masturbating. There were multiple times being stuffed in a tall trash can. There was the time, up in the Justice League satellite, when Speedy had snuck a shot of espresso into his soda and several young heroes were meeting with Batman right after that but Kid Flash couldn't stop his body from vibrating because of the caffeine. There was the time Trickster had waited right out in the open for him and Flash, only he'd set up some sort of barrier of almost invisible metallic dust that they hadn't expected and somehow instantly magnetized it on them with opposite polarities causing him and Flash to stick together as if Krazy Glued that way. There was the night of his bachelor party where they'd listened to Speedy and had ended up working as exotic dancers to avoid having their civilian selves reported to the police. There was the time in sixth grade, already Kid Flash, when he'd gotten an atomic wedgie from some 8th graders. The super thief thought that was really funny, accepting humiliation that could have been avoided to protect a secret identity. Well, a not so secret any more identity.

_Haha! I didn't think tighty whities could stretch that far!_

"Neither did I," Kid Flash grumbled out loud. "Look, where is this getting you?"

_Getting me? It doesn't have to get me anywhere. This is amazing. When I recall something that happened to you, I feel exactly like you did. I feel like I'm you, like it's happening to me. I could feel my pants getting wet when those kids wouldn't let you take a piss. I could feel the squeeze on my balls when they gave you that atomic wedgie. This is like the best virtual reality game ever and it's called Wally West._

"Come on!"

_Okay, now let's try . . times I was criticized, taunted or made fun of!_

Kid Flash groaned.

He could do nothing as minute after minute Red X called up a cascade of bad memories through his ability to remember everything Kid Flash remembered. There were scores of memories of other kids making fun of him for being poor. There was another legion of memories of kids making fun of him for being a nerd. There was his mother calling him lazy, calling him a slob, saying he was eating them out of house and home. There was his father, just before he left home and moved to Titans Tower, accusing him of being on drugs. There was Speedy, the first time he met him up in the Justic League satellite, relentlessly mocking his uniform and calling him gay. There were teachers exasperated by suddenly withdrawn, spacy Wally West, secretly Kid Flash, making fun of him in front of all his classmates. And there were his friends, once his only lifeline to normal life, Aaron and Stevie and Jeff bitterly calling him out for not showing up at study sessions and birthday parties, for abandoning them.

It all tumbled forth into his thoughts, depressing Kid Flash anew at all the bad feelings he'd endured, some of which he felt he genuinely deserved. But, after it was all done, he suddenly noticed something. The quiet. He thought of saying something to Red X. Well?! But he decided not to. Of course, he realized looking up at the ceiling over his and Jinx's bed, that Red X could hear those thoughts, too. But still there was more quiet finally broken.

_Things haven't always been that easy for you, have they?_

"No," whispered Kid Flash half intending to explain the biggest cause of all his problems but then not wanting to admit it, and belatedly realizing that thinking of it at all had put that same thought into Red X's mind.

_Your real father's a villain? Professor fricking Zoom? Holy shit._

Slowly getting the hang of this shared consciousness thing, he just thought of the facts. He pictured his dark haired, brown eyed, medium complected parents then fair skinned, blue eyed strawberry blond Professor Zoom. He recalled images of his father staring at him across the room in a way that he'd never understood till he was 16 and Zoom had revealed his paternity. It was a look totally devoid of affection. It said that little Wally was alien, that he didn't belong, that it would be just as well if he wasn't around. And it was a feeling that little Wally had internalized.

Again, Red X was quiet.

"They didn't love me. They never really did," said Kid Flash. "But . . "

He let his thoughts fill with recollections of Aunt Iris and how she had given him her time and paid attention to him, encouraged him and treated him as important, long before he became Kid Flash. He remembered what a dynamic and funny personality she was and thinking of her his eyes watered a bit. Aunt Iris, killed by Professor Zoom, my real father.

Again, Red X was quiet, almost shockingly respectful. Only quietly did he announce what sifting through these same recollections had revealed to him.

_Your Aunt Iris was your Uncle Barry's wife . . . and your Uncle Barry is . . . the Flash._

And just then, a little short of three hours after the transporter accident, as they seemed to have reached some sort of quiet truce, they were overwhelmed by opposite feelings.

Kid Flash felt a bit like a jet fighter pilot ejecting out of the cockpit. All of a sudden, his connection to his own body seemed different, diminished and he almost felt like he was parachuting down to earth, constantly floating but never reaching ground. But there wasn't any parachute strapped to him. He just felt like he was suspended in mid air. He still felt everything but he no longer controlled his body.

If there was such a process as leaping into the cockpit of a streaking jet, that was what things felt like to Red X. Suddenly, he not only perceived every sensation but somehow had control of this body as well. The teen speedster had momentarily gone limp. Now, the slender speedster sprang to his feet and went over to the three sided mirror in the corner of the room. With a smirk on his face he turned his gloved hands this way and that.

"Oh. Yeah."


	4. Like a 6 year old driving a Ferrari

"Oh. Yeah." Red X, now in control of Kid Flash's body smiled at himself in Jinx's 3 sided mirror, the kind they had in the fitting rooms of high class stores. He slowly turned his now orange haired head from side to side just to confirm his complete control.

_Oh no! What the hell's happened?! I can't control my own body! What'd you do?_

"I didn't do anything, but however it happened, I like it," said the super thief now super speedster. He leaned in toward the mirror till just an inch away and inspected his fair skinned face and blue eyes. "Oh, yeah. I can score lookin' like this."

In the background he could hear a series of pained grunts and groans.

"What are you doing, Zippy?" he chuckled as he ran red gloved fingers through his swept back hair.

_Trying to control my own fricking body! How can this be happening? This is a nightmare. I-I feel like a puppet or something!_

"How do you think I liked it?" muttered Red X sounding, of course, not like Red X but exactly like Kid Flash and why not, the words being generated from the exhale from Kid Flash's lungs passing through Kid Flash's vocal chords and out Kid Flash's mouth. He inspected his hair some more. "Hmmph. Kind of extreme but I guess it fits with the pale skin and the blue eyes. Makes me look like a certain kind of pretty boy," he added then traced one red gloved fingertip over one of the wings attached to the side of his mask.

"A bit over the top," he muttered then inspected his new nose and teeth before tracing one gloved finger over his lips. He pressed lightly once, twice and then a third time trying to simulate the pressure of kissing on them.

"Full but not big and nice color. I like 'em."

_I fucking hate this. I fucking hate this!_

Red X just smirked and continued down the body in his inspection, staring at and patting the shoulders under the skintight yellow top of the uniform. "Nice deltoids. These shoulders are really pretty good. But these stick-like arms are nothing special, expecially these forearms. God."

_Hey!_

"What, you want to try to defend these wimpy guns," said Red X turning his arms back and forth in front of him in the mirror.

_I'm not a-a strength guy. My power isn't the ability to bench press things._

"But, hey, these abs are awesome," said Red X, gently smoothing his palms over the eight conspicuous squares almost made more conspicuous by the skin tight Kid Flash suit. Then he felt, with both thumbs, the barely detectable narrow waistband where the uniform turned from yellow to red. He gave a slight tug upward.

"Dance belt, huh?"

_-sigh- Yes._

"Mmm hmm."

_That's all you're gonna say, 'mmm hmm'? You're not gonna make fun of me for that?_

"No. Why should I? Besides, it deserves respect. It's working hard," he chuckled before cupping one hand over a certain bulge in the red lower half of the uniform. "And here I was thinking there wasn't a single ounce extra on this body that wasn't there for the purpose of running."

_I don't know why I'm . . like that. I just am._

Red X chuckled some more at how self conscious Kid Flash was. It wasn't even his any more! Neither were these, he sniffed looking at the reflection of his backside in the three sided mirror.

"Damn. Zippy got back!"

He heard an annoyed sigh from Kid Flash in his head.

"If Sir Mix-A-Lot went looking for a skinny white boy on the down low he'd head straight for you, Zippy."

_Fine. What. Ever._

Red X massaged his new glutes with his red gloved hands. "I could do a million squats and lunges and not get mine like this."

_Another annoyed sigh._

Red X playfully slapped first one side then the other with a laugh.

_Would you quit groping my butt! I can feel everything you do, you know._

Red X did it some more just to aggravate him. "I like this body and there's nothing you can do about what I do with it, Zippy."

Well . . how 'bout . . at least . . stop calling me 'Zippy', okay. It's usually either 'Wally' or 'KF'."

Red X wiggled his butt in the mirror one last time eliciting one more sigh from Kid Flash. "Fine . . KF. Oh, and great calves, too. I am gonna have FUN with this body. He glanced down at one relatively thin arm covered in tight yellow. He smiled and then turned to one side and whirled that arm as fast as he could, in a split second creating a cyclone within the room that immediately picked up anything not nailed down including his new body, slamming him hard against a bookcase, leaving him groaning on all fours as sheets, papers and books cascaded down around him for a minute afterward.

_Unh. You idiot. What the hell were you doing? That hurt._

"I-I was doing that arm cyclone thing I see you do all the time."

_You never saw me do it in a closed room, did you, dumbass?! It creates huge suction at the sides of the room away from the vortex in the center. That's why I never do it. And now we've gotta pick up all this stuff._

Red X, to all outward appearances, Kid Flash, slowly got to his feet and started zipping back and forth replacing papers, books and bedding as it had been with Kid Flash, in the back of his head giving a steady stream of instructions.

_No, she likes the Len Deighton's chronological because they build on previous ones a bit. Ipcress File first. Right . . . All the Dinesen's go alphabetical . . ._

Luckily, Red X had super speed, so replacing 500 books plus all Jinx's papers and sketches only took 30 seconds.

"Hmmph. I didn't figure her for the unicorn type," he sniffed as he put her last sketch book back in place.

_There's a lot about her that you might get at first glance._

"One thing I gotta give you credit for, Zi-, I mean, KF. You saw the real her," said Red X continuing around the room straightening things. "I mean, the whole cat eyed bad girl thing did it for me, too, but as tough as she was on the other side, she was always a bit out of place. That team of hers just wasn't up to being with her."

_Tell me about it._

"Once, I had this terrific scam worked out with a particular painting I'd stolen. See, I had this trick worked out with the head of the mob in Gotham City. Guy fancied himself an art collector. He didn't just organize the casino skim and steal union dues. Oh no. He was an art guy, or so he liked to pretend. Yeah right. I told him that I was going to steal a certain painting and get this genius forger I know to make a copy, then I'd put the fake back and he'd have the real one. Only I had the forger make two copies and I was selling him a worthless canvas, too, and selling the real one to this japanese billionaire. But, when I go to the meet at the warehouse, there's the fucking HIVE 5 or 6 or-"

_Yeah, I know._

"Anyway. He thought it would be cute to have two separate exchanges done in the same place at the same time. They snatched some special bearer bonds or something for him. I never knew all the details, but I think they ripped him off, too."

_Wait, so you ripped off the mob?_

"I would have. But I put the painting up on an easel and Jinx comes over and starts staring at it. I tried to subtly get her away from there but I can't and I'm mostly involved with negotiating with said mob boss. We've just about come to terms when she laughs and goes 'This is shit'. I said, what, what the hell are you talking about? It's a beautiful Rembrandt. She laughs again and says how she loves Rembrandt and Vermeer too but points out how you can see the word 'Merde' in the lattice work of a window in the background of the picture. The mob boss comes over and she explains that even among forgers there's a bit of a sense of honor and it's their habit to sneak the word 'Merde', french for 'shit' into the picture somewhere. None of the other HIVE kiddies would've had a clue about something like that. Cost me three hundred thousand and put me in a tight spot. The guy was thinking that I'd cheated him. Which I had. He and the other guidos were all guns drawn and everything. But before things got so bad I had to go to full cloaking mode, I got all angry, swearing and stomping around about that damn forger and how he'd cheated me. I threw it all off on him and seeing as they didn't know who the hell Michel was, it didn't matter."

_So, you never got your money?_

"Are you kidding? I found another billionaire. Russian oligarch this time. I got more. And now," said Red X with a pat of his new speedster butt, "Let's go test these new wheels"

_No, don't!_

SMASH

In the middle of meditating in the next room, Raven slightly raised one eyebrow. She was used to hearing thuds and bodies, usually in pairs pushing against the walls in the next room. She just returned her focus to the delicate metaphysical lace of the barrier between this world and an adjacent dimension.

Red X rolled over from his back onto all fours groaning. "Oh, fuck, that hurt."

_Aarrgghh. God. You idiot! I could tell you were gonna go too fast. I could feel you trying to access too much speedforce before you even started. This is why Flash trained me for months you klutz! This is like giving a 6 year old the keys to a Ferrari._

Red X staggered to his feet. "Look, voice in the back of my head. I'm anything but a klutz. I just . . I just gave it a little too much gas, that's all."

_Everybody thinks my powers are so simple and easy, but if I run into a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour, I go splat and it's all over. Period. Everything I do has to be precise or my own power can kill me in nothing flat._

"Okay, okay I just-"

_Go fucking slow at first! Okay? Get the hang of it and slowly build up. I couldn't go top speed right away either. What makes you think you can?_

"I didn't . . I mean . . look, just back off, voice in the back of my head."

_You won't have a head if you keep making mistakes like that._

"Fine. What. Ever," muttered Red X opening and closing the door to the room and walking out into the hall. After a little calculatiion, he decided to go and tell his team leader that he was going for a run. He jogged to the door to the stairway at normal speed and then up one flight at just triple speed and then started down the hallway to the communications center, where, from Kid Flash's memory, he knew to expect to see Robin.

Sure enough, there typing away at the main console, was the boy wonder. He walked over and squashed two jet black spikes of gelled hair down to Robin's scalp.

"Wally!"

"Hey tiny little leader. Goin' for a run, just wanna stretch my legs. I'll be back later."

"Fine," grumbled Robin trying to fix his hair with one hand while typing with the other.

On the way down the hall to the stairway, he passed Starfire and gave her a lascivious smile punctuated by a slight show of his tongue.

_What was that for?!_

"Maybe nothing. We'll see," whispered Red X. He ran down the 14 flights of stairs at a reasonable 4 times normal human maximum, made his way out the main entrance and grinned at the sight of Jump City Bay surrounding the island.

"I always thought this looked cool," he said then took off down stone steps and onto the water where, a hundred feet off shore, he summarily smacked into a chest high wave and went flying like a tumbling water skier.

Glug-glug. He spit out a mouthful of saltwater as he bobbed amid the waves. "Don't say it!"

_Say what? That you're a freaking klutz who doesn't know how to use super speed and who's too stubborn to ask me? Is that what you think I'd say?_

Red X treaded water as he spoke. "Something like that. But, seriously, man, I am not a klutz. This is just much harder to control than I thought."

_Then ask me, first, before you try something so you don't kill both of us in the process!_

Red X sighed. "Okay. How do you run across the bay?" he asked as a wave passed over him and he had to spit out another mouthful of water as he bobbed there.

_Well, first of all, you have to go at least a little faster than that. Second of all, you never run over a wave. That's stupid. If it's calm, you can run straight across. If it's choppy like this then you run a serpentine path just along the troughs of the waves._

"Yeah, that makes sense."

_Of course. But you have to think a bit. Everybody thinks there's nothing to being a speedster. Just squeeze into the suit and run, right? But there's a lot more to it than that. To use these powers right you have to understand science, coefficients of friction, momentum, linear and angular momentum, sound waves, aerodynamics, fluid mechanics-_

"Allright, allright, I get the point. Now, just tell me, how do I get across?"

_Use both hands, the same way you did the cyclone in the room to lift yourself out of the water and start your legs going as soon as you're above the surface. Then stop the arm cyclones and run. Go a little faster than you were going. A little! And run between the waves and head for that small beach by the glass building._

Red X did just as instructed, churning the water into a froth around him and then sprinting up onto the beach at the other side of the bay where he skidded to a halt leaving 50 foot long marks on the sand that ended at his boots.

_Okay, now, just slowly increase your speed. Stay on main roads, interstates if possible. They have better quality surfaces and there are fewer places where cars will try to enter. But don't go above-_

Red X immediately started to run and was on the main interstate leading east out of Jump City, still accelerating when . .

BOOM!!!!!

_The speed of sound . . . -sigh-_

All around that section of Jump City, people stopped and looked around frantically. Was that a bomb?! Are we being attacked by terrorists?! Red X pulled over to the side of the highway as cars streamed past.

"Okay, there's a way around that, too, isn't there?" he muttered, looking down so as not to be too obviously seen as talking to himself by passing motorists.

_Of course there is. You have to vibrate something as you approach the speed of sound. It prevents the wave of air from building up and moving with you that makes the sonic boom._

"Something?"

_I usually do a finger or two on each hand._

"Can you vibrate any part?"

_Of course._

"Even . . " Red X smirked glancing down at the bulge in the front of the red bottom half of his unitard.

_-sigh- Yes._

"Seriously? That's fuckin' great!"

_But it's a lot easier to do when you're . . um . . ready to go. Fingers are much much easier when you're running._

"But, in bed, you could-"

_Yes. Yes. Allright? I can. Allright?! Are you happy now? Could we get on with the rest of this and put that aside for now?!_

"Between a super fast tongue and that . . . . . fuck!" laughed Red X before finally calming down and letting out a deep sigh. "Okay, I'm ready."

He accelerated from there, heading east on the interstate, listening to Kid Flash's instructions and sprinted across the country to the atlantic coast in 10 seconds. He made some more mistakes, going into a turn on Interstate 90 too fast outside Albany, New York, and pinning himself back first against the side of a box truck. But Kid Flash told him how to use a smaller version of the arm cyclone, one made with just one hand, to create air pressure against, say, his right side when he needed to make a sharp turn to the left.

After almost a couple hours of it, Red X was still rough around the edges at being a super speedster but at least not likely to kill them simply by running into something. The only remaining category of lessons was in vibration.

Red X was stopped somewhere in the desert in Nevada, at sunset, resting for a moment and enjoying the elevated sort of runners' high that super speedsters felt after using their powers.

"What a cool, mellow buzz this is," chirped Red X. "Do you feel like this every time you use your powers a lot?"

_Yeah. I do._

"This is kind of like what people've told me certain drugs feel like. Jesus, you could never be uptight like your little leader feeling like this on the job."

_I've tried to tell him that, obviously not quite worded that way. But I've tried to tell him that the speedforce creates these incredible endorphins in me when I use it. I just can't be 100% vigilant or, more like paranoid, like him. I just can't._

"Of course not. But . . speed . . force? That's what you said?"

_It's . . it's the stuff, the energy, from another dimension, Flash is pretty sure, that powers me and him._

"So it's not all the food stuffed down this throat?" said Red X, touching his neck with one red gloved hand.

_What? No! Not even close. Do a little math and you see that I could eat ten times as much as I do and it still wouldn't be close to enough._

There was a minute of no communication between them.

"I feel like you're hesitating about something now."

_I need to teach you about vibrating your molecules. It's . . it's a big safety measure for speedsters. If you're going to slam into something, or let's say a Gorilla Grodd or somebody throws you into something, you can avoid the impact by vibrating through it._

"Like the vault door of a bank?"

_-sigh- That's exactly why I'm hesitant to teach you._

"I figured. I just thought I should just say it instead of trying to bullshit around it."

_I . ._

"You know you need to teach me so that I don't hurt this body," said Red X running his red gloved hands from his chest down to his hips just as a station wagon with a mom, dad and three kids went by, two daughters frantically taking phone camera pictures of him. He gave them a big wave and a smile like he thought a friendly teen superhero might.

The voice in the back of Red X's head sighed and then relented. He went on to explain everything that Flash had taught him how the denser the object, the faster you needed to make your vibrational freqency, but how vibrating enough for the densest materials was really hard so they tended to vibrate just enough. You could tell if you weren't vibrating enough if the metal or wood or whatever it was seemed to offer any resistance. He had Red X practice first going through a cactus out there in the Nevada desert. He got through fine but, no, KF explained, things weren't supposed to explode after you passed through them. That meant way too high a vibrational frequency or a change in frequency in the course of passing through something. This tended to impart a lot of vibrational energy to whatever the object was. Red X tried some more and eventually got the hang of it. Kid Flash had him sprint on into California and go through the fountain in some town's downtown area practicing vibrating through till he came through dry. After that, he had him go through some thin metal barriers, the walls of an 18 wheeler's trailer and the doors of some abandoned houses.

The mood between them was, if not exactly friendly, at least very cooperative. As much as Kid Flsh didn't want to help the super thief, the guy might kill him by having no idea how to use super speed. He had no idea if he'd ever get control of his own body back but he sure as hell wouldn't if Red X killed both of them making them go splat against a bridge abutment.

And then, right when they finished, Red X sprinted down an interstate straight into Los Angeles to the main California office of the First National Bank.

_You bastard!_

"I never said this isn't what I'd do. I never pretended otherwise. See, I cased this one out. It's the feeder for all their branches in L.A. and it feeds the Orange County main office, too. The vault's in the back of the building one floor down, so, I figure I'll just vibrate through the wall to a spot above the vault and then vibrate and let myself drop right into the vault. Should be somwhere between 10 and 15 million in cash in that vault. Or, there was," he chuckled.

_No!_

But when he only took one running step toward the bank from the side street where he stood before feeling his limbs go stiff and become immoveable.

"What the fuck?!" he shouted in his head barely louder than his own grunting and groans as well as those of the voice in the back of his head. He struggled and strained harder and harder but could tell the the voice in his head was only doing the same. All the while, his speedster body was frozen in place, one leg in the air, a statue captured in mid sprint. A drunk woman staggered by giving no more than a glance to the spectacle of Kid Flash somehow immobile in mid stride in front of her before continuing on past.

Kid Flash hoped he'd be able to build on this and actually gain control of his body but when Red X relented and stopped trying to go toward the bank, he found he couldn't exert any control at all. Red X was still completely in command of his body. He just seemed to be able to prevent him from using it to rob a bank. It was at least some consolation to the humiliating predicament in which he found himself.

For his part, Red X was pissed off. He sped around L.A., randomly, challenging Kid Flash, "Okay, voice in the back of my head, stop me from going through the homes of movie stars in Bel Air! Okay, voice, stop me from vibrating through the girls' showers at that exclusive girls' school coming up! Stop me from going here . . . stop me from going there."

But Kid Flash couldn't. Finally Red X stopped up by an observatory overlooking all of metro L.A.

"So . . it looks like I'm in control as long as I don't rob a bank. Okay. Fine. There's a lot of other things I can rob."

_Maybe I can stop you from robbing them, too._

"Yeah, and maybe I'll just pull the mask down like this," Red X said, doing just that, "on TV, and tell the whole world that my name's Wally West!"

_And maybe, if I ever get control again, I'll tell the whole world that Red X's real name is Xing Fu Lee!_

"What? How did . . . . . . . so you can access my memories, too?"

_That's right, pal. I've mostly been busy trying to prevent you from killing both of us, but, yeah, I found that when I'm in the background, I can get to your memories just like you could mine. This is your driver's license, isn't it?_

In Red X's mind he could now see his driver's license, just as he remembered it.

_Okay. Black hair, brown eyes, six feet tall, 20, no, 21 years old as of last month and you live at 472 Skyview, unit 4802. Nice picture, pretty boy, and pretty nice digs._

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Red X now taking a step back to sit on the low retaining wall beside the sidewalk on this side of the bank. "You've got something on me. But we don't know if it'll ever count. I might be in the driver's seat for good."

_And what good would it do you to be me but tell the whole world my real name? Who are you sabotaging?_

There was a hard silence between them. "Okay. Truce for now on this revealing identities, shit, deal?"

_Deal._

With that, and uncertain what to do next, Red X sprinted back to Titans Tower. This time he made it smoothly across Jump City Bay and up to the 14th floor of the Tower, where, again, or perhaps still, he saw Robin typing away at the communications center console.

"Hey, little leader," he greated the boy wonder, and again flattened his gelled hair spikes against his scalp, Wally!, before continuing on to the kitchen and loading up a plate with some of the beef bourguignon that Jinx had made. He was just finishing the last few forkfuls when the wisdom of his decision to offer the secret identity truce became clear.

He felt like he was ejecting from the cockpit of a jet, still able to feel every sensation of this speedster body but falling, falling and never quite landing, suspended in air, just a voice in the back of the head of the body's owner.

And Kid Flash felt the incredibly invigorating opposite, suddenly vaulting or dropping into control of his body.

"Allright!" he half shouted from the table where he sat before letting out the huge belch that had been coming. From the stove where a pot of water was just starting to whistle that it was coming to a boil, he saw Raven raise one eyebrow.

"So," she deadpanned. "You like beef bourguignon almost as much as you like, well, everything else there is to eat?"

Wally nodded sheepishly. Raven poured her tea and took it back down to her room on 13 while he wondered if, perhaps, there might be something she could do. But what? He set it aside as a possible option but wanted to pursue a solution using the stupid transformer first. He pulled out his communicator from under the wrist of his right glove and looked at the time. Nearly 11 o'clock. Two switches of control in nearly six hours. He dialed *BB.

Beast Boy answered, sounding half exhausted. "Yeah?"

"Gar. It's me. How's it going?"

"It's really hard, Wally. I'm doing my best. This stuff is written like they're daring you to try to understand it."

"Well, just . . do your best Gar. The sooner you can figure it out, the better. I was just a prisoner in my own body for almost three hours."

"What?!"

"Almost three hours ago, all of a sudden, things switched and Red X controlled my body and I was just a voice in the back of his head."

"Ohmygod! Really?"

"Yes. We just switched again. I was telling him how to use super speed so that he didn't kill both of us running into the side of a building or something. It sucked. I could feel everything but I couldn't make my body do anything. It was like I was a puppet or something."

"Three hours, huh?"

"Yeah, almost, Gar."

"Um . . ten thousand seconds is like three hours, right?"

"Um . . yeah, it's . . two hours and forty six minutes and 40 seconds. Why Gar?"

"Well . . . um . . . when the transporter kind of did this to you, I think I remember a message about something being every 10,000 seconds."

"What?!"

"Dude! Calm down."

"I . . . I . . am . . calm . . Gar. Just . . just do your best to figure out how we can fix this."

"Sure, Wally."

Both Titans fipped off their communicators.

"You've been awful quiet all of a sudden," Kid Flash remarked to Red X.

_I'm just trying to figure out the lay of the land. I get smacked back to being the disembodied voice and I notice you wondering, in your thoughts, if Raven might be able to help. I see Beast Boy not looking very optimistic and I wonder what my next move should be. I didn't make it away clean from every single heist I ever took part in by running around like an idiot before I had a plan._

"Well, I don't usually go to bed this early-"

_No, you and Jinx usually fuck and read in bed._

"It's not just fucking . . I love her."

_God, are you whipped. We make looooooove. We don't fuck like animals. Do you say that? Do you say the girl lines for her now?_

"I don't have to justify myself to you. Anyway, as I was saying, I don't usually go to bed this early but I feel really tired. Can we agree to just go to sleep, both of us? If I'm exhausted or dehydrated or haven't eaten my powers are weak and I can't super speed nearly as long as when I'm rested."

_Allright. Fair enough._

From the moment he pulled off his uniform and dance belt and slid under the covers, Kid Flash knew this wasn't going to be a restful sleep. There was too much tugging at his thoughts. He pulled Jinx's pillow, the one from her side of the bed to his chest and inhaled deeply. Just the faint scent of her made him feel a bit better. But soon his thoughts swirled. Red X was inside him and threatened to reveal his secret identity. He might hurt Flash, too. He might hurt all his friends. God, this sucked. And there had been those horrible three hours when he could feel everything but couldn't control his own body, like a marionette being directed by its strings. At last he dozed off . . .

And then, he was standing in the transporter tube in Paris and standing right behind him, out in the open, not cloaked or anything, was Red X.

Huh?

And there was a flash of white light as he heard Gar's voice telling him, "Don't worry. I'm doing this next one. I'm doing this next one."

And he heard sound of wood creaking and his body felt odd and he seemed to be tumbling through the air in the dark, through a blizzard of strings. He kept swatting at them trying to get them away from him but no matter how much he swatted, more and more of them stuck to him. And he somehow knew that it was extremely important to get them off of him but he couldn't. And finally, he muttered out loud, "I've got the strangest feeling I'm being turned into a full sized marionette of myself."

And then there was light and he could see and feel and hear but he couldn't move. And his chin was on his chest and from this limited perspective, he could see his feet but they couldn't be his, they looked like yellow, rectangular blocks of wood and they had broomstick thick shins leading down to them but before he could survey this terrible sight any further, Abra Kadabra, one of Flash's most dangerous villains, walked into the room. He lifted up an X shaped thing over his head and Kid Flash felt his arms and legs move as a result.

"And, how are the two new stars of my show feeling about their fate?" he fairly purred at them as he grabbed a similar X shaped thing over a full sized marionette of Red X. Only, it was a sort of caricature of him with big, flat, rectangular feet and skinny, broomstick thick shins and thighs connected by sort of wood ball joint knees, then a triangular wood block for his hips, a horizontal wood disk at his waist, a bigger block for his chest and more ridiculous, broomstick thin upper and lower arms. Atop it all was a sort of oddly shaped head, a caricature of Red X's head in his mask. And Kid Flash could hear pieces of this discontinuous Red X knocking together underneath his tight uniform. He was wood. He was made of wood!

And Abra Kadabra manipulated the things the strings were attached too and as much as he wanted to tell him to fuck off and to punch him, he found himself clapping along with Red X. "What's your reaction to my re-routing your molecules from the transporter to backstage of my show? Why, applause of course!"

He could not stop himself from clapping together his wooden hands and then Abra Kadabra moved him so that he was in front of a mirror and saw that his body was now the same sort of discontinuous caricature made of wooden pieces as Red X's. He wanted to scream but couldn't.

And then, Kadabra brought in another marionette just as big as them but in a chef's hat and outfit. "Captain Creampuff" he said he was called and he brought in two slightly smaller ones in some sort of cook's outfits that he called the "Sinister sous-chefs". He said that he and Red X would be fighting them. But how could that be? This was insane.

But then, he and Red X were somehow on stage with an audience of mostly kids watching and Kadabra manipulated their strings to make them chase after Creampuff and the Sous-Chefs but they could never catch them and the kids thought that was pretty funny. And Creampuff kept throwing handfuls of coconut custard in his and Red X's face, never once missing, and the kids thought that was pretty funny. And for some reason every time they got a faceful of custard, both he and Red X would stop and bend over putting one hand on the ground and their butts in the air and the Sous-chefs would jog over and drop kick them. The kids thought that was pretty funny but it felt like someone was drop kicking his actual butt and it hurt. And then one time they actually caught up to Creampuff and the Sous-chefs but somehow he and Red X ended up getting helicoptered, thrown after several revolutions by a Sous-Chef holding him by the ankles, to the edge of the stage, where he landed chin first and felt just as dazed as if he'd landed on his real chin.

And Kadabra got a standing ovation and he and Red X were hung up backstage. Then he could suddenly hear Red X talking to him though he was similarly paralyzed by his transformation. He could hear him in his head. "You gotta get us out of this! Flash got out of something like this, didn't he? You must be able to!"

"I can't!" Kid Flash protested. "Our powers aren't the same. He has molecular control that I don't have!"

"What do you mean, you can't?! If you can't, then we're stuck like this forever!"

Forever!

Forever!

For-

Kid Flash sat bolt upright in the darkness of his and Jinx's room, bathed in sweat and gasping for breath. He looked quickly around, reassuring himself of his surroundings and that it had just been a dream. He also patted his chest with one hand.

_Jesus, thanks for the nightmare, asshole._

Wally muttered a weak "sorry" then zipped over to the bathroom. He took a quick, 15 second shower, toweled dry and got a set of clean sheets and pillow cases from the closet. He changed the bed and jumped back under the covers, again hugging Jinx's pillow to him. Sleep was, again, fitful.

And then, suddenly, he was on stage in a grand opera house in front of an audience of thousands. But it wasn't an opera. He was leaping and spinning across the stage and it was a lot of fun. He loved it. And then was carrying a beautiful ballerina over his head. And he put her down and saw a very handsome dark haired brown eyed guy he recognized but whose name he couldn't recall leaping and spinning just a bit beter than him and he saw that the guy was a ballet dancer and while standing there as he somehow knew he was supposed to, he glanced down and realized that he was a ballet dancer. Holy shit. He had on white tights that made him look ridiculous both front and back. Oh god. If anyone sees me! But no one was looking at him now. They were all watching the other guy, and he was obviously enjoying himself and the ballerinas thought he was fantastic. The performance ended to thunderous applause and everyone flocked around the dark haired, brown eyed dude and the two sort of lead ballerinas left the opera house with him and somehow everyone knew that he was going to have a threesome with them and that they'd be incredibly satsified afterward.

When, finally, Wally awoke, he did not feel as much rested as he should have from eight hours sleep.


	5. The warmth

Red X woke up even less rested, because he woke up more than an hour before Kid Flash.

Some time before 5 a.m., Kid Flash had reverted to being in control of his body. An hour later, Red X had the first flickering of waking and immediately roused himself. Now, before Kid Flash was awake, he could go through his memories and maybe make a plan without Kid Flash knowing what he was doing.

He made sure not to "say" anything to Kid Flash, not to speak to him in that obscure way that one consciousness could speak to another inside their one brain. He just called up memory after memory, but he got nowhere trying to find some sort of special weakness to Kid Flash. He and Flash were, uniquely susceptible to transformational energies according to Zatanna. She had turned him into a frog with just a couple crystals of some magical stuff. But you had to have magic powers to use on the speedsters to have that edge. And as great as the X suit was, it wasn't magic.

He dug around a little more but didn't come up with anything new going through Kid Flash's recollections of times he'd lost or had a tough time in a fight. It was what he already knew. He was super fast but relatively unprotected and not stronger than any other teen that size and in that condition. As for secrets, he was disappointed in that, too. Kid Flash didn't have any more secrets, not really. He already knew about his family, and about Flash. Mostly, he thought the speedster was a boring nerd. So much of his short and medium term memory was taken up by thoughts of this and that book. Boring. Borrrrrrrring.

But he could think of something that wouldn't be boring.

Red X concentrated on the words "the last time Jinx and I had sex".

He wasn't disappointed as he immediately felt like he was the speedster, waking up in bed next to Jinx and leaning over to kiss her. Ha, for all his talk about making love, images, sounds, smells, sensations and tastes immediately came forward from the word 'sex' and not making love. And to Red X's delight, he remembered everything as if he was KF. He was KF in these recollections!

This is fantastic! This is like virtual reality porn, thought Red X, only you could pretty much skip the virtual part. He experienced everything that Kid Flash remembered.

Jinx pulled him closer and deepened their wakeup kiss. He started kissing her neck and then working his way down, loving the warm, electric feel of her velvety soft skin. All the while she pulled and tugged at his orange hair, especially when he applied super speed tongue to already blossoming nipples. He could feel her getting more excited, hear her breath quickening and he grinned seeing her reactions. He was bubbling over with lust for her, but there was also a curious warmth of feeling underneath it all that surprised Red X. What the . .?!

He crouched over her amidst the haphazard sheets and leaned back up for a full kiss when she squeezed his butt and then gave him a little hex.

Yeow!

She gave a mischievous smile and he smiled back then proceeded down past the earlier targets of super speed tongue to another. She pushed his orange haired head down there, and started gasping in delight almost as soon as he started. Again, Red X enjoyed feeling how he was moving his tongue at super speed to drive her crazy. And again, this powerful feeling of warmth was underneath the joyful lust of it and Red X wondered what this was he was feeling. He, as Kid Flash, looked up to see a gasping, ecstatic Jinx and the warmth got stronger finally, just as she sounded like he was losing control, he stopped and crouched forward and it was like a practiced move. He kissed her on the lips and she pulled one hand back from the nightstand with the foil wrapper and put it on him with just the one hand. No first time couple was doing that. And he was on top then she was and then they were against the wall and finally back on the bed. It was bigger then Red X expected and he was vibrating it and she occasionally suggested "faster" or "deeper" between kisses till both were past the point of having any control and Red X felt the tremendous ecstatic release and the warmth underneath was like a sun going nova. He loved her and life and everything on earth but it all flowed from her. The warmth filled his head and it was wonderful. The warmth healed and made him strong. And he kissed her one more time and then fell back onto the sheets beside her and Red X left that memory.

He didn't want to stay in that recollection. It was . . it was a challenge in some odd way. And almost too fast for Red X to exactly identify why, thoughts flitted through his mind. It was different. It wasn't just the speedster body and the sorceress. It wasn't just that. It was . . it was different. It was different when they did it. A conclusion, an explanation flitted through his thoughts and he found himself feeling a sort of anger. No! That's not true. I . .

If I could make my tongue move like that, I'm sure it'd be a different thing with me and every girl, he told himself. But it felt hollow. He knew that wasn't it.

Or if I could vibrate my fricking thing like that. Thats . .

But his thoughts trailed off.

No. He knew that wasn't it.

There was some of that anger. What did this say about him? What did it mean, he wondered. And, again, a thought flitted through his mind but turned to other words. They just fuck really well together. If I found a girl, that she and I clicked like that . . .

But he wasn't convincing himself. And who else was there to convince?

What does this fricking nerd know that I don't know? He's only been with one girl in his whole life, fer chrissakes! What kind of freak thing is that? To marry that young without having known anyone else! Why would . .

And there was the thought followed by the anger.

It was ridiculous. This insular, nerd knows more about . . . ! I've been with 70 or 80 girls, some of the most beautiful women in the world! Ballerinas! Lots and lots of ballerinas! Models! This damaged fricking nerd with attachment issues knows more about . . ?! How many times did he cry himself to sleep? 40? 50? This guy . . ?!

No. That's bullshit. He-he lucked into getting an electric tongue and a magic johnson. I'd make it some body melting kama sutra topping thing too if I was outfitted with sex toys like that. I . . I . . .

No clear thoughts passed through his mind for several moments. It was too much.

Red X . . . Xing Fu Lee, was an extremely proud young man. He slowly composed himself with a series of sighs. It wasn't true. Maybe it hadn't been like that some of the times but, come on.

And Red X searched his own recollections. Girlfriends, affairs, conquests, even the few times on the down low. This was getting desperate. Any port in a storm. It couldn't be true. But he couldn't think of a counter example. There was never . .

He hoped to maybe prove something else and dove back into Kid Flash's memories. He wasn't sure if he could make them work this way, not with a word but a feeling, but he tried. He was searching for recollections that wouldn't come into his head by association without a term, just that sensation. The warmth, that overpowering warmth from inside. A part of him was anxious to find that there wasn't any such feeling that could be recalled or at other times. That would sort of prove something. Of course there wasn't anything wrong with him. It was just-

But memories cascaded forward and a reluctant and angry Red X made himself go through them and feel what Kid Flash had felt, just to confirm it, just to make sure that's what it was.

Kid Flash had vibrated through the door of their room at Titans Tower more than a year back and there he saw Jinx in a heavy sweater, sitting in the window seat with the sun on her, reading a leather bound book. And there was the warmth, like a flower opening its petals, the warmth filled every molecule of him and he said "Where she was always meant to be," to himself and there was pride too but the warmth eclipsed everything and he had to blink quickly to see and then he moved toward her and bent down and kissed her and . .

No! Fine. Okay, so that one sort of fits. How 'bout . .

Another recollection started to fill his thoughts. He was Kid Flash, dressed incognito. And he was leading Jinx, also dressed to look normal, up the driveway to a small farmhouse at the base of the hills east of Jump City. He knocked on the frame of the screen door and the middle aged woman inside started talking about being glad that the extra help was finally there. But he said that wasn't what he was there for and he stepped aside and Jinx looked at her mother through the screen door and for a moment both gawked and then the door flung open and they were in each other's arms, reunited and he could see how happy Jinx was and the warmth, the warmth was overpowering. It crowded out any other thought, any action except to feel it. And the happier Jinx looked, the more she seemed to heal, from a fractured, nightmarish childhood, the more she seemed to heal right there, the stronger the warmth got. And-

Fuck!!

Now, Kid Flash stirred slightly. Red X reproached himself for shouting, in his mind like that. He'd almost awakened Kid Flash from his sleep and he still needed to check.

He thought of the that feeling of warmth again and called up another memory. He was in bed naked spooning with a naked Jinx. And somehow he could feel that there was no way that they were going to do it this particular night. That was good, he thought. Those other times it was probably just the preamble to a massive session of fucking. But this time, he could just feel that he, Kid Flash, wasn't going to get any. And it was because of her. She was thinking of something very depressing, very damaging in her past.

He just touched his lips to the back of her neck, not even a kiss just a reminder of affection without trying to push it on her.

"If it helps you to talk about it . . ," he whispered. The warmth was there.

She started, hesitant at first but then hitting her storytelling stride, a couple notes of bitter sarcasm thrown in, as she spoke softly of an incident from when she was just a little girl. She told of how her mother and father had sheltered her, how they usually didn't take her into stores. But this one time they did and a whole crowd of people reacted with revulsion and calls to Jesus and scorn at a little 5 year old girl who was so happy in her little make believe world of flowers and fairy tales and was suddenly confronted with how ugly people could be without any cause. Then the warmth did an odd thing that time. It practically blazed in his chest and this time, the warmth made him want to kill. Or maybe the warmth had just worked a transfer of some sort because as he felt like he was flexing every muscle in his speedster body in agony at her hurt, it was becoming his. And, she finished her story and then sighed and he somehow knew, that it was gone from her, that the memory didn't mean anything to her any more. His warmth had burned it from her and when she said, "But now it doesn't matter", hers did the same for him. The anger dissipated from his thoughts like smoke in the wind and the warmth blazed out from him to her and he only thought of her, not of anyone to hurt. They lay like that, just enjoying laying there all night long. Before they finally fell asleep he whispered "I love you." And she whispered it back.

Fuuuccckkk!!! Red X shouted in his mind.

Kid Flash groaned and started to wake but Red X didn't care.

Fuuuccckkk!!! He let loose again because he realized it was true. And to someone who never lost and was always the best looking, coolest one in the crowd, who had always worn the right clothes and owned the right things and done the thing everyone else envied and would later try to copy, it almost seemed impossible. But this needy nerd of a superhero knew true love and he didn't.


	6. What's it feel like to be a hero

When Kid Flash woke and showered and mostly, as Red X snickered, pointlessly shaved, he was in control of his body. Red X seemed to be in a nasty mood but except for making fun of how meager his whiskers were, was mostly silent. He pulled on his dance belt and Kid Flash suit and had breakfast or, rather, breakfasts, what with him being a speedster, alongside Robin, Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy. Cyborg was still at some robotics and electronics expo in Star City. Jinx was still at her mother's farm in the hills east of Jump City.

He mulled over telling everyone but could see Beast Boy occasionally glancing at him, fearful that he would do just that and have Gar cast as the irresponsible idiot again. He sighed and shot a glance at his green pal that said he wouldn't. But he was close to it. And he even considered contacting Flash and getting the Justice League's help. But then ALL of them would be cast as irresponsible idiot kids, not by Flash but certainly by Batman and some of the others. Ka-rist! Can you believe those kids? Had the damn transporter workin' one day, one day, before they get Flash's sidekick sharing a body with a villain. One day!

Uh un. He was not gonna bring that down on the Titans. No way.

So, he conferred quietly with Beast Boy in the hallway after his breakfasts. Gar promised to keep working at it with the manual to try and see how to separate Red X's mind out of his body. And then, just after Gar walked away, right on time with the 10,000 second alternating of control of the Kid Flash body, he felt like a pilot ejecting out of the cockpit of a jet in midflight, parachuting down, down, down, but somehow never reaching the ground and unable to control the plane but still reading all the instruments. He could still feel every sensation of his body like normal but he was paralyzed and unable to control anything. Red X was in control. The super thief, now super speedster, zipped over beside Robin and first mashed down his gelled hair spikes.

"Wally!"

Then he gave him a super speed wedgie that drew another shout of complaint, this one soprano.

"wa-lly!"

"God, you're so much fun to kid around with little leader. Anyway, I'm going for a run. Speedster stuff. You wouldn't understand."

_Come on! He didn't deserve that!_

"But you didn't stop me, did you?" muttered Red X in the hallway, and with that, he was out the Tower and across the bay just a second later. He was just 10 minutes into practicing using his new ultra conditioned speedster body, vibrating through things, buildings and walls, when a call came in on the communicator. It was Robin's voice and the tone was urgent.

"Titans! This is a blue 147. I repeat, Titans! This is a blue 147. The location is 742 Jump Ridge Lane. 742 Jump Ridge Lane."

What the hell's that, wondered Red X. He was just starting to scour Kid Flash's memories for what these codes meant when the speedster, now just a disembodied voice in the back of his head, spoke.

_Blue 147! That's a fire with no known other crimes attached to it and the emergency is such that any Titans who can get there faster shouldn't wait for the rest of the group. 742 Jump Ridge Lane . . holy shit, that's an orphanage!_

And then something surprising happened. Two and a half hours before they were due to switch control again, they switched. Kid Flash felt like he was vaulting back into the cockpit of the jet. He was suddenly standing amid the financial district flexing his red gloved hands and feeling in complete control of his own body. But he scarcely stopped a millisecond to enjoy the feeling before sprinting off.

_What the fuck?!_

Not everyone was inclined to revel at all in this turnabout.

Kid Flash poured on the speed, creating a red and yellow blur weaving through the streets of Jump City to the other side of town. He knew the address because he and the other Titans had been involved with a couple charity campaigns to raise money for the orphans. Frigging orphans, for god's sake. At the edge of his thoughts were tragic scenarios of some poor little girls and boys who'd already suffered so much burning alive. He ran even faster.

_God, you're so melodramatic. It's probably a false a-_

He sprinted around a certain corner and there was half the ugly, bare bones building ablaze. He was, of course, the first one there. They'd trained for this exact situation and gone out on similar calls. His job was rescue and recon. Get everyone out that he could and figure out where any other victims were that he couldn't get out then tell the others. Robin would make sure utilities, gas and electric to the building, were shut off. Star would fly victims off the roof and Raven would use her powers to get to people trapped in spots he couldn't get to. Cyborg would use his strength to help keep exits accessible and Robin and Beast Boy would do whatever was needed at the moment.

Kid Flash ran inside and frantically zipped from room to room. Most of them were empty. The orphans had just finished breakfast. Some had gone back to their rooms but many were still in the tiny cafeteria. He grabbed two grade school age boys from one smoky room and sprinted them outside.

"Ohmygod! It'sKidFlash!!"  
"Thank you, Kid Flash!"

He grabbed a girl from a room starting to crackle with flame and bolted out front of the building where he left her with the boys. This was repeated over and over again. As the other Titans were arriving in the T-Jet, doing a vertical landing in the street, he was whipping up as powerful a pair of arm cyclones as he could. He'd tried it on a hunch and found, with portions of the building facade burnt and fallen away, he could literally blow out the flames at least for a few seconds. He'd give it the strongest arm cyclones he could and the fire would blow out for a few seconds, though it would quickly re-ignite as all the wood and other materials were too hot not to burst into flames with a normal supply of oxygen. It was wearing him out to keep doing it but it kept the flames from advancing toward the cafeteria where the remaining staff and 20 kids seemed to be trapped.

The other Titans could see what he was doing. He shouted to them about the kids trapped in the cafeteria and gave the flames another blast with both arms. Robin directed Beast Boy and Raven to help and threw open the top of a gas gate in the street to turn off the supply in case that was feeding it. Beast Boy immediately changed into a huge green rhino and charged through one charred wall right after Kid Flash had momentarily blown out the flames. They flickered anew around him but his thick rhino skin could take it. He charged further, lowered his horn and to the first terror, then relief of the orphans and staff a green rhino burst into the smoky cafeteria. The staff put a couple boys on his back and another grabbed his rhino ears. Beast Boy charged back out of there just as the flames started roaring again so loud that the Titans had to shout to each other to be heard over them.

Getting access to the cafeteria had been necessary but it also gave a new oxygen source to the flames and the walls of the cafeteria started crumbling faster than ever. An exhausted Kid Flash whirled both arms as fast as he could but couldn't put the flames out this time, only make them flicker. Robin shouted to Raven and she disappeared into the street and then reappeared in the orphanage cafeteria rescuing six orphans, on whom flaming debris was about to fall, inside a protective black sphere and carried them outside to safety. Starfire rescued a girl who'd gone to the roof to escape the flames and Robin coordinated Kid Flash giving one last burst of arm cyclones with Beast Boy the rhino charging in to the cafeteria again. The green teen emerged again, with two boys on his back, a girl holding on by his ears and another with Gar's horn through his belt loop, but he had flaming debris all over his thick, leathery hide. He changed back to pretty boy Garfield Logan and most of it simply fell off him.

The Jump City Fire Department was arriving on the scene now amidst sirens and horns and Robin directed Raven to one side of the cafeteria and Kid Flash the other to try to rescue the remaining trapped orphans. Raven got most of them in an ominous looking but protective black hand while Kid Flash, clearly running at less than full speed, grabbed one little girl in one arm and two little boys in the other before sprinting out and nearly collapsing in the street. Robin spoke to one of the staff and had them make a count, to check if everyone was safe. One boy was missing. Robin demanded to know where he would likely be. The staff member had barely finished describing the room when a gasping, bent over Kid Flash took off one last time and emerged five seconds, an eternity for speedsters, later with a red haired boy under one arm.

The other orphans cheered and he caught his breath leaning against a fire truck.

But, as soon as the danger was passed, it happened again. He felt like he was ejecting out of the cockpit of a jet and falling, falling, but never hitting ground, only suspended in the air, still feeling every sensation but not able to control anything. Robin came over to him and half shouted, "Good job!" over the din of the fire trucks and firemen and patted his shoulder.

_You see! That's the real Robin!_

A tiny orphan girl, one of the ones he'd carried out of the building, came over and hugged him around one thigh and mumbled "Thank you Ki' Flass" with a sigh. And Red X hesitantly patted her head.

"Hey, buddy, that was a new one. When'd you work on using that arm cyclone thing to tamp down the flames?" asked Robin over the din.

"Um, it was a spur of the moment thing."

"Hey, it was a great idea. Time was the big problem there and that worked directly on it," said the boy wonder with another pat on the shoulder before turning away and directing the firemen. Some of them came over and shook Red X's red gloved hand and thanked him as several more tearful orphans hugged him and wrapped themselves around him whispering thank yous and hugging the legs and waist of the speedster from all sides.

"Um, this, like, 8 year old girl in the front is squeezing my package fer chrissakes!" he thought to himself and Kid Flash.

_Oh, shut up. She's 8 years old. She doesn't even know what your package is._

"Does she know what my buns are? Cuz she's squeezing both of 'em."

_Fuuuuuuck off. You can't seriously be acting like a jerk about a wonderful emotional response like this._

No response.

_We saved all these little kids' lives. I coud tell you felt real emotion about it. Don't try to pretend you didn't._

"Maybe," muttered Red X as the orphans slowly separated from his speedster body and as he watched Robin speaking to the News7 reporter in front of a camera, the real Kid Flash, only a disembodied voice in the back of his mind, continued to pepper him with questions.

_This feels pretty good doesn't it? It can feel great to be a good guy, can't it? All those tearful little kids would be dead if it wasn't for us saving them. That's pretty worthwhile, isn't it? Isn't it? But then if you'd been in the area I bet you'd have come and helped save those orphans too, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? And you saw the real Robin this time. He's all about the job but he gives credit and praises too, doen't he? He's not as bad as we joke about him being, is he?_

But, though Kid Flash could feel strong sympathetic feelings in Red X's mind, Red X wouldn't admit to anything.

Okay. Fine. It had felt . . nice to be all goody two shoes on a rescue mission and all. But what filled Red X's thoughts were questions about how that had happened, Kid Flash regaining control of his body. There was that time and his being able to stop him from robbing that bank in L.A. It seemed like if he was absolutely committed to something, he could interrupt his control of the body. But if he was even a little bit ambivalent, like smiling suggestively at Starfire or giving Robin a wedgie, both of which he might, to some degree want to do, then he, Red X, maintained control.

Kid Flash was perplexed by Red X's response to the wonderful feeling after the rescue. He thought he might agree on the spot to become a hero and give up being a super thief. He could tell that he felt sympathy, especially when tearful orphans were clinging to him. But he didn't go further. Why not? What kind of person wouldn't? It was hard for him to understand. So, he started to delve deeper and deeper into Red X's memories.

The experience amazed him. When he called up a memory, it felt just as though it had happened to him, as though he was the little boy or the young man in the memory. He looked up at his mother, felt the pat on the back of his grandfather, looked into the eyes of that girl the first time. There was nothing like this. He was . . living that other life, at least the part of it contained in any memory

Over the more than two hours of Red X's control of his body, while Red X practiced being a speedster, Kid Flash went through Red X's memories, all of them that he could, some flashing by quickly, others lingering and Kid Flash stopping at one incident or another for minutes. There wasn't any orderly way to do it. How do you review a person's whole life? You could try to do it chronologically. Kid Flash did that. But one thing or another would catch his interest. School, for instance and he'd stop following Xing Fu Lee at his first day of school and the next one he remembered and he'd zoom ahead to something else that was more prominent in his memories of school.

That was his real name, as Kid Flash remembered from the day before, Xing Fu Lee. He repeated it out loud at the start of his research into Red X's life.

_Xing Fu Lee_

"Yeah, so what?" Red X said out loud, stopping in the breakdown lane of an interstate. "So you know my name . . Wally. At least it's cool and not a total dweeb name like Wally."

Red X went back to practicing being a speedster and Kid Flash called up memory after memory. It was difficult to form a complete picture. Human memory is a series of ties, associations, not a linear string of consecutive events. It was like one of those giant nearly impossible puzzles with every piece the same color that takes up the entire top of a coffee table. And recalling Xing Fu Lee's memories of one thing might put a piece in an open area with nothing touching it until something else connected to that and something else to that. School linked to memories of a friend. The friend linked to memories of a place, that place to another, to a certain job or another person, finally things might link to the other memories and fill in more of the picture.

The quality of the recollections, the feeling of having lived it, was incredible. The sights, sounds, smells and touches of every event were as though they'd happened to him. Incredible. However pissed he was that Gar and the transporter had done this to him, he had to give credit to the damn machine. This was amazing. And, at some point as he experienced the cascade of memories and formed a picture of Xing Fu Lee's life, he wondered about Xing Fu Lee experiencing the life of Wally West in such perfect detail.

But it was only a fleeting thought. Red X was a tremendous puzzle to him and slowly he filled in enough of the pieces to know him. And as he did, it occurred to him that aside from Red X himself, he was probably the only one who did. He was such a contradictory character.


	7. The Story of Red X, part 1

Obviously, he wasn't the first Red X.

Nor was Robin.

The first Red X wasn't a hero or a villain but Xing Fu Lee's grandfather with the same name, Xing Fu Lee, as Red X well knew.

It was 1950 and the Lees lived in China near the border with North Korea. It was a brutal life barely above subsistence and kept that way by the communist dictatorship that now ruled the country. Xing Fu Lee was one of four boys in their family, all of whom were summarily conscripted into the chinese army. The "People's" Army they called it, though Xing Fu couldn't seem to find any people who much wanted to be in it. Oh, there were some idiots who believed the propaganda about protecting the mother country from the american devils. The dumbest boys seemed to be taken in by that but hardly anyone else. But like any dictatorship, it didn't work by offering choices, unless you considered death to be a good alternative. You were going to fight the americans or they'd kill you back there in China. So, they went to fight the americans, the four Lees.

Despite the lack of any choice, the brutal officers still kept inundating the soldiers with propaganda about how terrible, how evil the americans were. Maybe some of the soldiers bought it. But it eventually occurred to Xing Fu Lee that if these horrible officers hated these . . "americans", wasn't that a point in favor of the americans?

He kept this conjecture to himself as they marched miles and miles over the border into North Korea and finally attacked the americans. But the way they did it was so brutal and insane, and showed such indifference to the lives of the soldiers that Xing Fu would have shot at his officers if he could just get a gun. They didn't all have guns. They all had bullets which they carried in all their pockets. they assumed they were going to be issued rifles near the front. But there were not enough guns to go around. So, the officers' solution was that the first man in a line of soldiers would advance toward the americans shooting a rifle. When he was shot, the next man was to pick up his rifle and advance and shoot the americans, until he was shot. At which point the third man was to pick up the rifle . . . etc etc

Looking across a valley of lives being wasted, Xing Fu Lee vowed then and there to shoot the officers who would make men do such an insane thing. He thought his brothers must be feelings simillarly but couldn't tell. His brothers had been separated from him. The chinese army did not like you to have attachments that might mean more to you than your fear of your officers. He thought he saw one of them killed off to his right and frantically tried to scheme a way out of this nightmare as he got closer and closer to the rifle. As he approached, a thought occurred to him. At last he was the next man. He picked up the rifle from the dying man, blood gurgling out of the poor man's mouth, and he immediately went down as well, the rifle flying from his hands before he could bring it to his shoulder to shoot even once. He lay there for hours, till darkness, burning with rage that the "People's" Army wasn't even trying to save the lives of the wounded.

Luckily, he wasn't one of them. He hadn't been shot. He waited till 2 a.m. then crawled to the american lines. He was nearly shot there. One jittery GI was going to shoot him despite his raised hands but another stopped him. "Surrender. Surrender," he kept repeating using the word he had heard american soldiers would use. They weren't exactly delicate with him. One slammed him to the ground with a rifle butt to the shoulder as he was led past the man's dead friend. But eventually they brought him back behind the lines and had him speak to an interpreter. They gave him food, better food than the chinese army was giving him. And he told them all he could.

He also told them that he wasn't just a prisoner. He wanted to be an american, he said. The chinese had let his brothers be killed without caring about it. And in just a few minutes behind the lines, he saw helicopters flying in to take wounded american soldiers off to M.A.S.H. units. He'd never seen a helicopter before. But the americans would fly these giant mechanical dragon flies to the front lines for each and every wounded man, not just officers, anyone! Anyone! This meant something. They didn't tell men to line up fifty deep with pockets full of bullets behind one man with a rifle. They didn't leave them dying in the dirt. They flew these giant mechanical dragon flies in to save the wounded men. This meant something. This was better. The way these men were living was better. The men, themselves, were the same. They were smart and dumb and good and bad and kind and cruel, just like in China. Anyone could see that. But the way they were living was better. Xing Fu Lee begged the interpreter. Don't make me go back. This, pointing to everything around him, the tents, the jeeps, the helicopter, this is how I want to live. The interpreter nodded.

For two years, Xing Fu Lee worked with the army as an interpreter, interrogating captured chinese soldiers. At first, the americans looked over his shoulders suspiciously but he quickly built up a remarkable record of getting soldiers to divulge information. He sympathized with them about how the Chinese army and government was mistreating them and established a sincere rapport. Many jaws at first clenched shut opened, first reluctantly then readily in conversation with Xing Fu Lee.

After the war, he settled in Jump City, at the edge of Jump City's chinatown, again, not quite in one world or the other. He got a job in a factory and fell in love with a korean american girl. At the factory, too, he could feel suspicious eyes looking over his shoulder at first. A defector from commie China? What?! And there was another man at the factory named Xavier whom the other workers just called "X". As a joke about his background, they started calling him "Red X" to distinguish him from Xavier.

But no one actually doubted Xing Fu Lee's patriotism. He was a model citizen. He and his wife made sure their two sons worked harder than anyone else's kids and got through college as a doctor and lawyer, respectively. The younger son married a beautiful russian american girl, a ballerina at one time who was now also a lawyer. First they had a daughter, Alexandra, a russian style name of the mother's choice. Then, in 1988, they had a son they named "Xing Fu" to honor the boy's grandfather.

Little Xing Fu was special right from the start. He learned to talk faster than anyone else's baby. He learned to walk faster. He seemed to have come out of the womb with tremendous confidence. He was an inquisitive, happy little boy and all his relatives doted on him. But his parents were both working professionals and didn't have quite as much time for Xing Fu and his sister, Alexandra, as they would have wished. When he was four and going to nursery school, his older sister started taking ballet classes. To make her schedule a little easier, his mother put Xing Fu in the same ballet classes. His father worried about this. All he had ever heard was that the boys in ballet were sissies. Even just being considered a sissy was a very bad thing for a boy. He did not want such a reputation to rub off on little Xing Fu.

But nothing bad ever seemed to rub off on little Xing Fu. From the first they could remember, in play dates, nursery school and kindergarten, Xing Fu always led the other children. He was a very handsome boy with dark shiny hair and a strong face with just a hint of his father's background in the shape of his warm, light brown eyes. He was always among the smartest too. It helped that the Lees had a very intellectual, high culture household. They read to him and his sister and had walls covered with bookcases. He was way ahead of his classmates at the start of school and never lost that advantage.

And, somehow, to his father's relief, the ballet never meant anything. Just in case, his grandfather taught little Xing Fu martial arts. But the reputation of the ballet never seemed to tarnish their son. Quite the opposite. It wasn't that Xing Fu didn't care for it. He loved it. He loved leaping and spinning and showing off. He was terrific at it, as with everything else, right from the start.

He never made a secret of it at school or anywhere else. Xing Fu Lee was so confident in himself, he couldn't imagine being ashamed or scared to talk about something he did. Why should he be? He was the best at it, just like everything else. Besides, right from the beginning of school, Xing Fu was one of the most popular kids, one of the ones everyone wanted to be around. It was a curious thing that his classmates could see was odd when they talked with kids from other schools. But they just accepted it. That was Xing Fu Lee. As he got older and advanced through junior high school into high school, Xing Fu Lee, always just "X" now to all the kids in school, only further cemented his status as clearly one of the coolest kids in school. And yet everyone knew that he was taking ballet classes.

For the first several years, it sufficed that it was fun to jump around and he enjoyed showing off and the constant praise he got. And just as the satisfaction of that was starting to fade, X started feeling more and more appreciative of how wonderful it was to be surrounded by all these pretty girls. Thirty girls in class and only one boy, him! This was not only not bad. This was terrific! And all those pretty girls certainly liked to look at him. He'd haphazardly alternated wearing sweat pants, gym shorts and tights up to that point. But, now he only wore tights. He didn't feel self conscious at all. He was very comfortable surrounded by all those pretty girls. The first girl he kissed was one of the ballerinas outside the dance school. And the first time he had sex was with that same girl. And the second time was with another of the ballerinas, as was his first blow job. And so was the third, fourth, fifth and sixth. And the seventh through tenth were with a third ballerina and . . .

No, he didn't mind at all being seen in tights by all these girls. In fact, he couldn't imagine a better setup than the ballet class.

Going to a new school, entering 6th grade in junior high and then 9th grade in high school, was, each time, the occasion for idiots to try and call him gay and ridicule him. But his grandfather, Red X, had taught him martial arts on Sundays for years, in addition to telling his grandson all about his life. Getting a heel smashed into the side of your face over and over proved to be too high a price to pay to call a boy gay.

Besides which, Xing Fu's reputation was that he was anything but gay. Word was getting around. For years he had been the only boy in classes of 30 at the ballet school. The instructors could see at a glance that the slender Lee boy was a terrific athlete. It was hard enough to get boys in their classes, never mind boys with real athletic ability. That Xing Fu wasn't any sort of sissy was even better. That the boy radiated a sort of cool was more amazing still. The instructors at the Jump City school of ballet nearly had a fist fight over who would get Xing Fu Lee in their class. The boy had everything. He was very handsome with a slightly exotic, part asian look. He was incredibly graceful, better than the girls even at their exercises. He could leap better than the instructors dared hope. And he had that certain look. He looked good in costume. He was slender but he wasn't embarassed to be seen in pictures. If anything, the boy turned out to be something of an exhibitionist and certainly an extrovert. This was important in getting him to be in pictures in ads and newspaper stories to promote the school.

But, the instructors' smiles of pride were sometimes replaced by worrisome frowns. There was something about the boy, almost a predatory air to the attitude of cool that surrounded him. When the first whispers reached their ears, not a womanizer, they were girls, but ballerina-izer? Would that be the right term? When they first heard of what was going on, 22 out of 30 so far, or so it was said, they realized that they had known it all along. Xing Fu Lee and this ballerina. Xing Fu Lee and that ballerina. Pretty soon it was easier to try and figure out which ones were not rumored to have slept with Xing Fu Lee.

The instructors worried that it would tear classes apart with jealousy between the ballerinas or recriminations between them and X but nothing of the kind happened. Was this generation that different, they wondered. Could everyone really just be a friend with benefits? Or was it this boy?

One of the instructors pulled one of the top ballerinas aside after class one day and asked her, what kind of boy X was in school? The girl laughed. "Did you see that Ferris Buehler movie on TV the other night?"

The instructor said no but that she'd seen it before.

"Xing Fu Buehler," the ballerina laughed. "That's him. He practically runs the school in this secret way. Seriously. It's awesome. Any trouble you get in, X can get you out of it. You need a pass or a day off, you see X. The parents all think, because he does ballet and always says 'ma'am' and 'sir' that he's just this goody two shoes, top grades sort of boy, but behind the scenes," she laughed, "there's this whole other X."

The instructor nodded. Of course. She'd known it all along, hadn't she? But she'd been afraid to face it because this slender, incredibly handsome boy was so special as a dancer. The occasional smirk that she caught. The jokes she'd heard him tell. The way he'd stared down that boy picking up his sister after class, the one who'd said something to him, threatening him without a word and the way that other boy, a bigger one, had backed away. That was an insight. It wasn't a secret. They knew. Everyone knew. They knew it right away. It was part of his appeal. It was why the mothers no longer carpooled picking up their daughters but all showed up individually. And he always leaped over to let them look at him, didn't he? There'd been that marijuana cigarette that she'd found and berated all of them for and he'd stood up and taken the blame for it but she thought he was just being chivalrous and the whole thing sort of dropped. But the way the girls all looked at him when he'd stood up! Their expressions! Of course! It really was his, wasn't it?

The instructor had a long talk with Xing Fu about all of this a few weeks later. He didn't deny anything. But, worse, he barely seemed to care. That's what was shocking. After you stripped away the 'yes ma'am', the boy really didn't feel obliged to do much of anything on these counts. She wasn't sure what to say. There was a sense that he was beyond them now. He was nearly 16, 6 feet tall and a fantastic athlete and dancer. More than that, he had a certain charisma, a certain style that he exuded whether the role was light or dark. He inhabited the roles but with his own signature style.

Duende.

That was the word that that hispanic woman had blurted out smiling and watching him perform. Duende. He had duende. And the truth was they couldn't control him or teach him much more here.

She stared at him for several moments, standing there beside the mirrored wall, slightly smiling at her just now realizing the real situation. "Gotham City," she finally told him. The sky's the limit for you, Xing Fu. You've got the face the-the look, she blushed quickly raising her glance away from his . . hips; we've never had a boy who could dance like you here. We're not set up to help you take that next step. She unfolded the flyer in her pocket, that she'd printed from on line, an audition contest for a scholarship to the most prestigious company in Gotham City, one of the most prestigious in the world.

Xing Fu Lee's parents put him in his best suit and on a plane for Gotham for the audition. This was a new experience for X. He was not master and leader of this new environment. He would have to prove himself worthy.

There were 10 other boys there changing beside X in the dressing room at the Gotham City Ballet but he immediately crossed off 6 or 7 in his mind as not being real athletes and therefore not real competition. They would all have good technique, know when to point their toes, how their arms move, how their backs should arch. But who was an athlete, too? They all glanced warily at each other in the wings at the side of the stage while one after another they did some common steps and leaps and then some partnering with one of the prestigious company's star ballerinas. All of it was watched by the company director, some other executive and two men that X quickly recognized as a couple of the biggest stars in ballet. The "heir to Baryshnikov", one had been called, strawberry blond and just included in People Magazine's list of the 100 most beautiful people or so one boy had whispered. The other had been called the dark prince of dark princes or some such silly thing on a poster at the school back in Jump City. Both were in their mid 30's, near the very end of their runs at the top but certainly authorities.

X ended up going last. He kept moving around while the others went and got himself loose and warm. It was going pretty much as he'd expected. None of the people watching said "this kid's no good" or "this one's got it" or "he's the best yet". But the grading was clear even if it was all indirect, body language, tone of voice, smiles and the quality of the glances among the company director and the two mid 30's stars. It was clear that only the couple of others whom X had thought were competition had made much impression. The others sort of performed by rote even if they didn't make any flagrant mistakes. Then they called him, the secretary to the company director reading off a sheet on a clipboard.

"Okay, last one is, um, Zhing Fu Lee."

"Excuse me. It's Xing spelled with an X but sounds like a Z. Xing Fu Lee," he told the woman reading from the clipboard, his voice polite but deep, commanding not timid or offended, with an implied "it'll never happen again, will it?" She apologized and said it the right way. And then he auditioned. He gave it everything he had, every bit of concentration and athleticism at the same time. He'd never leaped higher, spun faster or did it all with such impeccable control. He carried and caught and presented the star ballerina like a proud lover and when he was done, she broke ranks with the apparent agreement among them to be non-committal.

"This one!" she said almost airily pointing at X. "I could dance with him tomorrow night. His hands are . . perfect. He's stronger than he looks and the-the way he lifts, the way he catches . . this one." She added a complimentary pat of X's white tighted behind which he took in stride.

The company director glanced at the two stars. 100MostBeautiful and Dark Prince nodded their agreement. X smirked at the other 10. The other boys grumbled and went back to the dressing room to change while X stayed on stage and talked to the ballerina and the two stars and then mostly the company director. After shaking hands with the company director, he made his way back to the locker room, almost walking right past 100MostBeautiful and Dark Prince.

They told him to come with them after he changed. He followed them into a cab that took them to one of Gotham City's most expensive restaurants. The staff seemed very familiar with both the established stars. They introduced him as "Xing Fu Lee, the next great star of the ballet world". Everyone fawned over him and nobody seemed to care that they were serving expensive champagne to a 16 year old. The two stars spent the night, there and at two successive exclusive clubs telling him what they had learned about being a star. They told him about how it was especially important for him to partner the ballerinas better than the other guys. They told him that it didn't matter if he wasn't feeling particularly good some night, he was the star. He was the reason people had bought tickets. He had to wow them, not just be okay. He had to amaze them even when he didn't feel his best. They told him about his responsibility to the company but they cautioned him not to make the same mistakes they'd both made. Don't let them tie you up with a long term contract when you first become a star. See what other companies will offer you. It might be fine to settle down in your late 20's with one ballet company but don't let them tie you up so that you give all your best, most athletic years to one company such that people in other cities, other countries don't get to see you in person. When you have the leverage, put the hammer to them, Xing Fu. Put the hammer to them.

X was taken aback. It was incredibly generous of these two established stars to be taking time to give him the benefit of their experience. For a few moments after auditioning, he thought he'd seen them give him looks that were, perhaps, envious, envious that he was 16 years old and likely to be a better dancer and bigger star than either of them had ever been. They had only a year or two, tops left as stars and he had all his glory ahead of him. He drank more champagne feeling quite blessed.

His two mentors introduced him as the "next great star of the ballet world" at both the clubs, too. They couldn't have been nicer to him, giving him advice and buying him champagne. Perhaps the first sign of anything else was the glance that went between them when he retrieved some girl's balloon from the ceiling of the second club. It was her birthday or bat mitzvah or . . something. She came in with a bunch of helium balloons. Some popped and her last one floated up to the abnormally high ceiling of the club.

"I'll get it," smiled Dark Prince, leaping in his dress pants and print shirt. But he came up short.

100MostBeautiful gave a patronizing smile and patted his fellow star on the shoulder. I'll get it, he said, taking off his suit coat before jumping but he couldn't touch it either.

Xing Fu Lee finished a flute of champagne and jumped up from his seat without removing his jacket. "I'll get it easy," he grinned, then took one running step, leaped and palmed the balloon . He walked over and handed it to the girl with great ceremony and saw dark looks in the eyes of his two mentors. He sat down a bit uncomfortably but soon enough the mood was festive again.

The next morning, there he was, on the flight back to Jump City, again sitting down uncomfortably, sore where he'd never been sore before. Finally, he smirked. The irony. All those idiots back in Jump, all those years who'd called him names while he was boinking their sisters and their girlfriends and the girls who wouldn't have anything to do with them, all those idiots, some of whom he'd beaten up, all those idiots he'd proven wrong. And now he was leaving them all behind in his dust but last night . . . He rolled his eyes. It was definitely ironic. But, it almost felt like a freebie, a mulligan. Every guy in ballet's supposed to be . . . Soooooo . . .

Still, he didn't feel different. A young stewardess went by. Outstanding, he thought, smiling at her. She looked great in that skirt. What a booty on her! And that was it. He still didn't feel . . gay. Even if it hadn't been that bad. Maybe X's self-confidence was too strong to take much of a dent from one night. At any rate, he went home and got congratulations from his family and everyone at the ballet school on the full scholarship, everyone at high school, too. He was leaving all of them for the next phase of his life. He already felt like Jump City was a part of his past, somehow vaguely not worthy of him. The Gotham City Ballet was the present.

X flew with a single suitcase full of stuff back to Gotham City and moved into a dorm-like apartment six stories up from Gotham City Ballet's offices. He shared a room with another boy whom he quickly saw was very interested in him. X wasn't interested in him and made that clear but needed to see that that boy was out of there as much as possible so as to not cramp his style. He did what he could to pair his roomate up with another boy. He needed to be able to bring girls back there. For, as complete as his dedication was to honing his craft and becoming stronger and faster, X was just as dedicated to pursuit of the ballerinas at the school. And now there was a whole new roster of them, none of whom he knew and who were even prettier than the girls in Jump City. And just as completely as he succeeded in the former mission, he succeeded in the latter.

His dark, slightly exotic good looks and the masculine air he had about him, so different from most of the other boys in the ballet school, appealed to the ballerinas, as did the fact that he was a better dancer than all the other boys. He partnered so well, carrying them with such graceful ease, his hands always in exactly the right place, comfortable and firm but never soft. It was natural for them to think that X might be a wonderful partner in . . other ways, as well.

His roommate eventually complained about how often X was asking him to leave so that he could be alone with Natasha or Stephanie or Suzanne or Zoe or Chloe or . . who was it this week, he whined. X offered a deal to pay him to leave. He said if that wasn't good enough, he'd just screw the girls five feet away while the roomate lay there in his bed. The roomate threatened to tell school officials if he did. X looked the shorter, willowy blond boy in the eye and promised to beat him to a bloody pulp if he snitched on him then repeated the offer of money to leave. The roomate's voice cracked as he said he'd take the money.

School officials had some sense of what was going on, at least that's what X thought, but things stayed just quiet enough. As he had in Jump City, he was sure to be charming and sophisticated and to always make clear to every girl right at the start that this was just for today or tonight. This wasn't forever. In both places, there had been a girl or two who simply wouldn't go for that. All the others would. So, the sweep and scope of his conquests stayed quiet enough that it didn't become an issue for the school. And the sense that he was their next big star was clear to everyone. Standards were different. His technique was impeccable and he had an amazing leap. His spins were incredible. He never seemed to get dizzy or lose his reference point. He had as good body control as anyone under contract with the ballet company. On top of all that, he had the look, slender but very athletic, with an amazing ass in the words of one girl, and the right face, slightly exotic for being half asian. It was a face that would definitely sell tickets. Lots of them.

He could see it in the eyes of the school officials and the company director when they looked at him or talked about him. If we can just keep him under control . .

At first, they seemed to intend to do so by starving him, starving him of recognition. The few roles they gave him were the tiniest ones, parts in which it was impossible to show promise. Stand at the back of a crowd scene and literally do nothing. Just be another body. Still, the audience applauded the first time he strode on stage. They'd heard about this Xing Fu Lee, the boy who got the full scholarship. Word had got around. But they got no chance to really see him or what he could do. The company put the clamps on him by giving him nothing for roles. When a decent role for one of the boys at the company's school occasionally came up, they let another boy play it and assigned Xing Fu Lee to be the star's understudy instead. He would only appear on stage if the company's star got hurt that night, in that performance.

Early in that night's performance, 100MostBeautiful, the "heir to Baryshnikov", landed just slightly off and tore something in his knee. Luckily it had happened right at the end of the first act and he'd been able to grimace and remain standing and not simply crumple to the stage while the audience could see. The curtain went down and the star limped over then sat down unable to even walk further. X approached him, standing over him. The star groaned in pain as he looked at him. Finally X stuck out his hand, not offering a hand up but demanding the star's red velvet top. They had made visible last minute changes to the collar and that top had to be worn by the dancer on stage. Some of those watching thought it was cold. One ballerina said something to X as he fastened the last snap at the collar. X ignored her.

But the audience couldn't ignore him. Where was 100MostBeautiful?! At first they were almost indignant. We paid our money to see 100MostBeautiful! Where is he?! "Who's this new guy?" asked the casual fans who didn't know how he'd been touted.

But gradually, the audience quieted. And slowly they become more and more fascinated with the understudy. Who was he, leaping like that, and so charismatic? The name was whispered through the audience. Xing Fu Lee. Xing Fu Lee. And when the strains of Tchaikovsky reached their closing crescendo, they were standing and cheering, shouting "bravo" to a bowing Xing Fu Lee.

The write up in the paper the next day was headlined, "Amazing New Star Debuts". X bought extra copies for his parents and sister. They asked, on the phone, what this meant for him. Would he get a big contract offer from the company now and get to dance lead roles? X told them what the aging stars had told him. The company would offer him a long term contract now. On the other end of the line X's mother and father congratulated him. But, he told them, he wouldn't sign anything long term. He had the leverage now. He'd start contacting the leading ballet companies in other cities around the world. Paris, London, Moscow, St. Petersburg, etc. His parents tried to talk him out of it, suggesting he pursue security. He wouldn't listen.

Just as he expected, the officials at the Gotham City Ballet called him down at the end of class the next afternoon. He didn't even change. He went down there still in tights.

"Yes?" he asked in his best faked innocence entering the company director's ornately appointed office.

The director and two other officials had him sit down in a chair lower than theirs and, in a tone of great generosity, offered him a 7 year contract. Security. He didn't even look at the dollar amounts involved. He told them no.

They weren't used to being rebuffed by students from their school being offered contracts. They usually got to play Santa Claus in such instances. But X didn't believe in Santa Claus. They didn't take well to the new experience he was giving them.

"One performance! One performance!" they eventually shouted at him in exasperation. "Where do you get the nerve to try and call all the shots after one performance?" they demanded of X, voices bouncing of the supremely expensive decor. But no matter how they shouted or tried to intimidate him, the teen remained frustratingly calm, impervious to their pressure.

"Well, gee, sirs, you want to give me a contract after one performance. Why should I believe that Paris and London and the Kirov and Bolshoi won't?"

"It doesn't work that way, Xing Fu! We-we scouted you! We developed you! We know all about you!"

X smirked for reasons they didn't understand.

"We might not make you this offer in six more months, X, when you turn 17 and you can legally go to all those other places."

He chuckled. "I'll take my chances," said X.

They called him a lot of names before letting him out of the office They didn't give him quite as many lead roles in those six months as they should have but he was still the sensation of the season. The biggest stars in ballet had always come from overseas. Finally, the biggest star was being developed here. It was a whirlwind six months. Patrons of the arts and other people wanted to introduce X to the high society life of New York. They wanted to be his friend and be seen as being his friend.

The best restaurants.

The most exclusive clubs.

The richest arts philanthropists in the most expensive homes in Gotham City. He was introduced to them all. He was the bright new star of a particular niche in the entertainment world. But, still, it was a pretty small niche, even if handsome Xing Fu Lee might increase its market appeal a bit.

Then came the blocks. And he increased its market appeal a lot.

There was probably nothing he could have done to increase that market appeal more than the blocks. They came about during the filming of a commercial. 100MostBeautiful was represented by the same talent agency as the people producing a certain commercial and the same ones who represented NBA star Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant was still trying to rehabilitate his image after the incident in which he was charged with rape in Colorado. Though the woman had eventually decided not to testify, there were rumors about intimidation tactics by Kobe Bryant's entourage. He was also seen by a lot of fans as being a divisive personality who was contemptuous of teammates. There was a lot of room for image improvement.

JUMP was the group's name, a charity serving city kids that, like a lot of others, came up with a name just to fit a catchy acronym.

Juvenile Urban Mentor Program. J.U.M.P.

The script for the commercial called for both Kobe Bryant and a ballet star to say a few corny words together after some narration about the charity had been played over footage of them both jumping. But, 100MostBeautiful was injured and couldn't film it. A few other dancers at the company were offered the chance to take his place before the job was given to X. The company's officials told a different story to X when they offered it to him. The company director tried to make it sound like a gift because they thought so highly of X. But he'd heard the rumors of the real reasons. Five other guys had been offered it but didn't want it, because it paid almost nothing and there was a feeling that they'd be humiliated by the comparison to Kobe Bryant, standing there in tights next to him.

X just laughed. He wasn't intimidated.

He didn't play basketball and barely knew who Kobe Bryant was, at least till the night before the filming of the commercial. But that night he reviewed a bunch of clips of Bryant playing, noting exactly how he tended to jump.

When he showed up on the set the next day, X was wearing the same white tights and gold and white velvet top he'd worn in his last performance. Kobe Bryant smirked while shaking X's hand, snickering at his white tights.

"Damn!"

"Nice to meet you, Cabby," said X.

"It's Kobe," replied the 6 foot 6 basketballer.

X just shrugged. If the guy was going to make fun of his costume, he'd give the guy contempt right back. He complimented him on his kilt. Kobe Bryant demanded to know what a kilt was. A skirt for guys, X told him with an implied "of course".

"They're shorts!" complained the NBA star.

"Then why are they as long as my sister's skirts that go with her business suits?"

"They're shorts!" repeated the NBA star before grumbling something about how ridiculous it was that he was being made fun of by a guy in tights and adding "we all wear 'em like this."

"Okay, okay. Didn't know you were so sensitive. Sorry Koko."

"Kobe!"

"Right."

The crew set up to film a few seconds of Kobe dunking the ball, jumping of course. X approached to the edge of the basketball court as Kobe dunked a few times for warmups, carefully noting every movement.

"What if a player tries to stop you when you do that, Cabby? What happens then?"

"Kobe! And . . nothing," Bryant sniffed, "They never stop me."

"But all they have to do is swat the ball away, right?"

Bryant gave a big toothy grin. "Oh. You wanna try . . ballet boy?"

X nodded innocently.

Bryant got the ball at half court, then waited, sighing, while X did a whole series of ballet stretches. Finally, X motioned for him to go and Bryant dribbled on the run approaching the basket, jumped, and to his amazement, was met in the air by "ballet boy" who swatted the ball out of his hands. The crew and onlookers ooo'd aahhh'd and cheered as Bryant seethed while retrieving the ball.

"Did you do everything you're supposed to do?" asked X in a deadpan tone, prompting snickers from the crew. "I mean, that wasn't very good for you, was it?"

"I'm gonna do something this time," a furious Bryant growled, dribbling the ball back to midcourt. Ballet costume clad X acted nonchalant. The crew was hushed. "I hope he doesn't hurt him," said one cameraman of Bryant, a notoriously hyper-competitive bad sport.

Bryant charged to the basket even faster this time but, again, Xing Fu Lee shocked him by leaping just as high as the six inch taller NBA star and precisely jabbing one quilted gold and white velvet clad arm past Bryant's left and swatting the ball out of his right.

"Get that shit outta here!" shouted X as the watching crew exploded in cheering and whoops. Bryant stood there frowning and befuddled. Finally, X approached him offering a handshake.

"Seriously. You jump pretty well, Kiki. We might have a spot for you in the ballet."

" . . don't fucking believe this . . " Bryant grunted through his teeth before stalking off, only reluctantly returning for the shot of him and Xing Fu Lee together at the end of the commercial.

The footage went viral.

Bryant had treated some of the film crew very poorly, snapping at guys with microphones and cameras as well as people serving food and they were more than happy to rush the video out to Youtube and all over the net.

It was a massive problem for Kobe Bryant as Charles Barkley and other NBA studio analysts snickered at him getting rejected twice by a guy in white tights. He went into a slump for the next several games and when he missed a potential game winning shot one night, Charles Barkley diagnosed the problem. "Terrrrible," was Charles Barkley's pronouncement. "He-he plays like he's still waiting for that ballet dude, that Xing Fu Lee to come flyyyyyyyyyyin' in at any moment and swat his shots away! He got put in a slump by high culture! He needs an opera or somethin' to get him out of it!"

It was a coup for the ballet. One of their guys humiliating a top athlete! They'd never even dreamed of having their art validated in this way.

The word of those in the know that Xing Fu Lee was going to be the next big star of ballet had gained him some notoriety but only within a very small circle of interest in such things. There was the occasional picture in the society sections of the newspapers. But now the crowds at every performance were much bigger and celebrities were showing up at performances in order to be seen getting out of their limos at the rediscovered 'in' thing.

There was a media crush to interview the young ballet star who'd humiliated Kobe Bryant. Oh, they weren't direct about it. They all professed to want to bring more high culture to their viewers. The Today Show, Good Morning America, Regis and Kelly, Oprah, Dateline, 60 minutes. Leno, Letterman, Conan, Craig Ferguson. They got a look at him stomping Kobe Bryant and what a pretty boy this Xing Fu Lee was and they stampeded to have him on. He had cameo appearances on Lost, CSI and 24, too. He had fun with it.

The Regis and Kelly appearance was typical.

"And we're back. Okay now, Kelly, our next guest is the hottest thing on the internet. Show 'em the video . . here he is blocking NBA star Kobe Bryant . ."

"Kobe Bryant, Reeg!"

Studio audience ooo's and claps as footage is shown.

"Not once but twice!"

"Twice, Reeg!"

Studio audience ooo's and claps louder "That's what I said, Kelly! Now, here's the new star of the Gotham City Ballet, Xing Fu Lee, along with ballerina Melissa Devereaux!"

Xing Fu Lee and the ballerina walked out onto the studio set in full costume moving to stand between Regis and Kelly as the studio audience applauds. Kelly leans backward to look at X's rear. A big grin comes over her face and she makes a big thumbs up gesture to the audience which laughs and applauds. Regis rolls his eyes.

"First off, Xing Fu Lee, how old are you?"

"I'm just a week short of seventeen, Regis."

"And Melissa?"

"I'm twenty three, Regis."

"So, you're six years older than him!"

"That's six years, Reeg!"

"Yes, Kelly. Is that a problem at all, Melissa?"

"Um, no, he's very mature for his age, Regis."

"Now, your name. Xing Fu Lee. That's chinese, I'm told. Is that right?"

"That's right, Regis my ancestry is half chinese, half russian."

"But you grew up in the states, right?"

"That's right, on the west coast, in Jump City."

"And you took ballet lessons there from an early age and became such a hot shot that you got a scholarship to come here to Gotham City!"

X grinned. "Basically, yes."

"So, how-how did this all come about, playing basketball against Kobe Bryant?!"

"Well, they were filming a commercial for JUMP, the Juvenile Urban Mentor Program, a charity that works to help poor inner city kids-"

"A GREAT charity!"

"Great charity, Reeg."

"Um, yes, it is. And they were filming a commercial playing off their name, JUMP, and one of the established stars of our company was supposed to take part but he was injured and I got picked to take his place."

"Did you know who you were going up against?"

"Um, no. Not really. I'm not an NBA fan."

"So you didn't know who Kobe Bryant was?!"

"No."

"He didn't know, Reeg!"

"And then you're told to block his shot!"

"Well, no, he started taking shots on the court and dunking the ball and I asked if it was always as easy as he was making it look. And he said that other guys tried to stop him but they never could. I guess I looked like I didn't believe him and he challenged me to try. So I did."

"Did he ever, huh, audience? Huh Reeg?! Xing Fu zinged him!"

Huge audience applause.

"So, now, there's been a huge increase in interest in you and the ballet. HUGE!"

"Huge, Reeg!"

X nodded.

"People didn't realize you guys could be such good . . . athletes," said Kelly openly ogling him mostly below the waist.

"Box office is booming! Ballet's become a hot ticket! Stars show up in limos to be seen there! And you're the toast of the town! You even got offered an NBA contract by your home town Jump City Warriors, didn't you?"

the audience applauded and X bowed lightly.

"Yeah, I was."

"Well?"

X shrugged. "It's a nice compliment but I'm not interested."

"But you can block Kobe Bryant. Nobody else in the NBA can do that."

X shrugged again. "I-I've kind of got a problem with the uniforms," he admitted.

"YOU've got a problem with THEIR uniforms?!" shouted Regis shooting a look up and down the ballet dancer in costume as the audience roared.

"Yeah. I mean, the, I guess they wear . . shorts. But, come on, they look like skirts. They're so long they look like the skirts my sister wears with some of her business suits. It's too . . feminine. I'd rather stick with something where you're clearly a man, like this," he said gesturing with both hands to his own costume as Regis and Kelly laughed and the audience roared. Then he and Melissa danced followed by tremendous applause.

The ballet company was ecstatic.

With one Youtube video they'd gone from effete cultural backwater to hot new, rediscovered old thing. It was beyond their wildest dreams and they begged X to do as much publicity as possible. They didn't have to plead much. Soon there were paparazzi following him into and out of various exclusive Gotham clubs and restaurants always with a stunning ballerina or model on his arm. The fact that this 17 year old seemed to be readily consuming alcoholic beverages was never much discussed.

They tried, again, to get X to sign a long term contract with them. A 6 year deal, they said this time. They talked about the money. It was the money they focused on this time, not the security. He almost laughed, sitting in the big corner office with the company director and other officials not yelling at him this time but practically kissing his ass. He'd discreetly made contact with the right people in London, Paris, Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as another company in Gotham City. He knew how much money he could get from all of them. He made the Gotham City Ballet pay him more and he only agreed to a one year contract. In the course of it, his notoriety grew and grew. The society and gossip pages continually featured him and his girlfriend of the moment. He was box office gold for the company.

The company directors were ambivalent just the same. They loved that X was making them money but they desperately wanted the insolent pretty boy taken down a notch. They varied his roles as much as possible. We want to let you show everyone all the different things you can do, they told him. But privately, they wanted X to have to endure some bad reviews. There would certainly be some. All their dancers had specialties. It wasn't just the dancing requirements of the roles. There was an element of acting, too, of portraying a king or a prince or a pirate or a villain or a callous lover and conveying that to the audience. Certain roles belonged to certain members of the company. But X shocked them, making each character his own, conveying just with the slightest difference of body language and expression, or how he held his head, that he was a king, or gigolo or villain. He seemed to inhabit the roles, even the most extreme like the hyperactive Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream, a role usually given to the shortest men. The critics loved him every time.

At the end of that year, he left and danced for a year at the top company in Paris. After that, he danced a year in Moscow, then London, then St. Petersburg and then Jump City. Everywhere he went there was a huge rush of publicity when he first came that only barely diminished by the time he left.

But other things kept, strangely, diminishing in the cities where he went. These included art collections, stashes of jewels, and the contents of safes and safe deposit boxes.

*****TT*****TT*****

_Author's note: This all started when a girl I knew saw a short clip of Red X leaping away from danger in one episode and said, "That was so ballet!". I asked her what she meant, not knowing anything about it and she explained some to me and gave me some background. Since that time, I wanted to fill in some background for Red X and make him a ballet star._


	8. The Story of Red X, Part II, first score

Xing Fu Lee was not one of those boys who got a thrill out of stuffing a candy bar into his pocket and walking out of the store without paying for it. Petty crime didn't interest him. It didn't give him a rush, which isn't to say that he hadn't dabbled in it. Despite the rigid propriety of his upbringing, X had gone in with friends on stealing things a few times. But it didn't do it for him. No. He was too smart for that. Only idiots took risks without a chance of a big payout. The first time that the concept of thievery sent a charge through him was when he saw the safe.

Part of it was, undoubtedly, that he wasn't supposed to see it. He was certain of that. That look of guilt, insecurity and worry on the man's pudgy face was unmistakable.

He'd been sent to the principal's office by Mrs. Porter, a fussy old woman who got upset that he made a joke the whole class laughed at and then again and a third time. What could he do when the old bat was such a perfect, unwitting straight man and soooooo goddam boring?

The class really enjoyed listening to X more than they did her Gobi desert dry sophomore english lecture. X made another joke and had them doubled over laughing and she threw him out of class. X just rolled his eyes. What a cowardly way to deal with it? Why not make your stupid lectures a bit more interesting, instead?

He strolled down to the principal's office, not anxious or frantic or scared like he was supposed to be. X wasn't the type to be scared. He walked into the office with the yellow slip in hand and presented it to the secretary behind the counter with a mischievous smile. X was no fool. He knew where power was and where an 'in', a bit of favortism could help. The secretary adored ballet and loved that this athletic, and oh so handsome boy danced. She asked him what it was this time. He rolled his eyes and said, with a conspiratorial smile, that his jokes were much better than Mrs. Porter's lecture. She winked at him. At that moment, things could go either way. She could send him in to the principal's inner office, the door on the right, or just toss the yellow slip away as she'd done a couple times in the past for the handsome young dancer. She dithered. X went to the door and knocked and opened it, thinking that, by a sort of reverse psychology, he'd push her to dismiss the issue by starting to take punishment. It was then, when he'd just barely cracked open the door, that he glimpsed the safe.

"Oh, sorry," he quickly muttered and closed the door as a grumbled "Get out of my office!" came from within.

"Guess that settles it," said the secretary tearing the yellow slip in half.

X thanked her and made his way into the hall to get out of sight of the principal, in case the man came out looking for him. Because in that split second, he'd seen something that he shouldn't have, not only in the sense that he shouldn't have gone in the room. But, over the man's shoulder, past his desk and to one side of his chair, he's seen a metal door and a dial, a safe. There was a safe in the principal's office inside a low cabinet behind his desk. And in that split second when he'd had the door open, the principal's expression had clearly revealed that there was no good reason for it to be there.

And the mystery, puzzle and possibilities of this started to eat away at X. He took a seat in the cafeteria. Some kids came by and saluted him. Hey, X! They asked if he was going to be at the party the next night. X gave them a look.

Duh.

Of course I will!

But he didn't have any interest in being X, Mr. Cool, right then. All he could think of was that safe. Why would the principal have a safe at all? Any documents he deals with are public. It's not like he deals with state secrets or anything. Money? Why would he have to keep money in a safe here at school? The school system had a treasurer or something like that, somebody in charge of money for all the schools. Rockford or Rockman or something, right? And they paid by check. They didn't hand teachers stacks of bills. Why have a safe? And why look anxious or defensive about anybody even possibly seeing a glimpse of it?

This interested X. This really interested X. He thought about it for the rest of the school day and at ballet class that afternoon. Luckily, even with divided attention, he was still the best boy dancer his instructors had ever had in class so things were still fine. He just didn't check out how Stephanie and Zoe and Claire looked in their leotards this one time. He didn't use the multiple walls of mirrors to sneak peeks at them and the others. He wondered about the damn safe. It started to become something like a challenge in his mind now and then another thought occurred to him, a way to put some puzzle pieces on the board and see the whole picture. He turned down a couple different girls' offers of rides home so that he could walk and think about it.

And there, just three doors down from the ballet school, was a little shop that X approached. It had an old style wood door with a vertical ellipse of glass in the center and painted cursive lettering, "Guttman Locksmiths" on it. He knocked. It seemed like the thing to do. There never seemed to be anyone going into that shop. Maybe a customer was kind of an oddity. There was a bell that the opening door tinkled, and an old man, easily 65, 70 shuffled out in response to the sound.

He asked if he could help X. X asked him if he knew what a "Worthington 100" was.

The man gave a smile of a certain quality.

"Okay," continued X. "Do you know how to open one?"

The man gave another smile.

"You mean, without the combination?" he asked only slightly innocently.

X smiled. Obviously. And he put his gym bag down on the counter.

"What's in there?" asked the old man. X explained that it was just his ballet stuff, that he'd just come from class.

"You do that sort of thing? The-the tights and everything?"

X smiled. "Yup. Me and thirty girls. Thirty pretty, athletic, fantastically flexible girls and me."

The old man chuckled. "That's good. See, I never thought of that angle, a fella doin' it to have a shot at all those girls. I walk by there sometimes and old as I am I stare at the pretty girls. Just wonderin', just dreaming. Me, back at your age and this one or that one, not . . not now. Of course not. But you got yourself a nice angle there."

"Thanks," said X and he went on to describe what he'd seen in the principal's office. The old man agreed that there didn't seem to be any reason why the principal would have a safe.

"Can you teach me to crack it?" X finally asked.

The old man smiled. It was a smile that told of abilities still remaining despite age and that hinted of things done that could not be spoken of in most company. He was going to quickly disclaim any knowledge of or interest in crime. Who, me?! But there was just something about this boy. He didn't bother. They started right then and there and the boy pleasantly surprised him, amazed him in fact.

The old man wasn't sure what it was that had changed everything from how it used to be. But the world wasn't the same and he didn't much like it. Maybe it was how convenient everything was, a phone call any time you wanted it, for instance. Or maybe it was the stupid video games, always needing to be distracted from whatever was around them. He tried not to be that sort of cranky old man he'd made fun of when he was young, but damn, these kids were so scattershot! How would the world ever keep running with all these kids who couldn't concentrate on anything, when these kids were needed to actually take care of things?

But this boy was different. Show me again. Let me try again, he kept saying. The kid got it right, popped open the door of the safe in the back room the second time he tried, and it was a much harder one than a Worthington 100. But he wanted to do it again. And again. And he wanted to try every other box in the back room. When he finally looked up it was almost 11 o'clock. Nearly his bed time, he yawned, but the boy could've just kept going. He pushed him out and told him to come back the next day for some more training. The boy thanked him. And when he went to turn out the lights, there was a twenty dollar bill on the counter. It had to have been the boy. There was no way he'd left it there himself or that those cheap people who'd come in that afternoon had left it. But he decided it was pretty clever. The boy gave him the money without the whole, can't accept this, no I insist, scene having to play out. He pocketed the money.

And the next day, late in the afternoon, he half lied to himself and invented an excuse to flip the OPEN sign around to CLOSED and take a walk up the street past the ballet school. He looked in the window and sure enough, it was true. There among a flock of luscious swans was his pretty boy safe cracker trainee. Holy crap, the kid was a looker and built right even for wearing . . that. The boy never noticed him. He was carrying one of the swans over his head and glancing up at said swan's backside. And the way all the girls looked at him. He sighed as he got past the ballet school's window. He wished the girls had looked at him like that back when he was that age, but big ears, big nose and a small jaw, five foot eight. He'd never looked like that. He could've resented the kid being such a pretty boy but the boy didn't act like one. And he wanted to learn! He wanted to learn. And that was such a rare thing. With everything he'd gone through in his life, the heists he'd been in on, he had a lot to teach. Now, finally, there was someone who wanted to learn.

When the boy came by, again with a knock and just as respectful as the day before, he started him right in on the toughest safe he had. In no time, the boy cracked it. He really was a natural. A great ear, sensitive fingers and a sharp mind. He asked the boy how he intended to do the job. The boy told him about the party, at a house just a quarter mile away from the school. Slip out. Change. Break in. Get to the principal's office. Crack the safe. Find out what's actually in it and take whatever has any value. Go back to the party, have everyone think you never left. A house full of alibis.

He made the boy refine his plan. Is there a night watchman? Where's he stay? When's he move? How will you get past him? What are you gonna wear? What tools are you bringing with you? On and on and on. Question question question. He made the boy close his eyes and walk step by step through every step of it, from doorway to doorway, in his mind, through the heist. He told the boy that, over the years, he'd seen a lot of hotshot types who were so sure of themselves that they couldn't be bothered to plan things out thoroughly. And usually those guys ended up wearing orange jump suits and picking up trash at the side of the road. He made the boy go over it all again and, without hesitation, the boy did. He talked some more with the boy afterward, feeling a little bit like a proud papa and then the boy left, promising to be back Monday after ballet. He reminded the boy. Don't tell anyone! The average kid isn't like you. He's a-a stupid, scattershot little numbnuts who can't focus on anything! He'll-he'll post somethin' about it on Facespace an hour later! You can't trust your safety to him! The boy smirked. He knew.

X slipped out of the party, out the back door of that house, now ringed by parked cars. Practically asking for the JCPD to come by and shut 'em down, he sniffed to himself as he changed out of his clothes into all black under armour stuff. Then he slipped between some houses and onto school property where he pulled the black ski mask down over his face. He pulled the hook and rope from the bag over his shoulders and threw it perfectly up onto the roof edge with minimal noise. In just a few seconds he climbed onto the roof and brought his hook and rope with him to the other side of the building. He walked almost silently, his steps creating barely enough crunch of the gravel to reach his ears never mind some guy two floors down. Then he waited. Every hour, the watchman walked around the place. Probably has a watch set to beep every hour. That was the time to move, when the big lummox's own movement's would mask the sound of his. 11 o'clock. He heard some kind of sound and saw a flashlight lazily sweep back and forth by the main entrance and start to move away from him.

He set the hook and started to climb down. This part was tricky because the window he'd walked behind the secretary and unlocked that afternoon still opened the wrong way, one of those deals that swung open with the top end moving in. And the damn thing didn't open all the way. It meant he had to lower himself and hold himself with one hand while opening the window and then, awkwardly climbing in. Ballet dancer X hated being awkward. He slipped through the window and deftly caught some papers and a book that almost fell off the counter back of the window as he came through. He closed the window and removed his own mini flashlight, most of the face taped over except for a narrow slit.

He flashed the light for a second to show himself the path to the door of the principal's office. The door itself was locked but the old man had given him a set of picks and shown him how to use them. The principal's door only resisted a few seconds before compliantly opening with a small click. He waited a few moments, listening intently for the night watchman. Noises were coming closer. He closed and locked the door to the principal's office behind him as quietly as possible. He saw a sweep of flashlight under the door a minute later but then the light moved away.

The opening of the safe was sort of anticlimactic. It was too easy. X barely crouched beside it 30 seconds when it popped slowly open. But what was inside amazed him. Bills. Hundred dollar bills and twenty dollar bills, piles of them. They were stacked a bit haphazardly on two shelves, not completely with all the edges aligned, not all bound by those paper bank wrappers, just sloppily stacked. He didn't care. He allowed himself a moment to wonder how the fuck the principal had gotten all this money. Siphoned it off from the school budget, likely, the bastard! Then he removed the bag from over his shoulders, and scooped all the cash into it. There was also some paper work, accounting of sorts and he took that too. He was wearing thin black gloves, the kind for kayaking, and didn't have to worry about finger prints. He emptied the safe into his bag and then closed the safe door. He decided to leave the door to the low cabinet open, to let the man know right away what had been done.

Getting out was uneventful. X listened for the night watchman and when he was away, squeezed out the window, climbed up onto the roof, made his way over to the far side of the roof then went down again and through the woods to the house where the party had been going on. Only the cops were there now and breaking it up. He had to sneak over to retrieve his clothes and then changed behind the pool house of the place next door. He made his way to his house without anyone seeing him and only opened his bag in his room after 2 a.m. using moonlight to see all the cash on his bed. It took him a while to count it.

There was $47,280 there.

He couldn't stop smiling.

Forty seven thousand two hundred eighty dollars!

There was no way the principal was supposed to have this money. No fucking way. And this presented opportunities. He had to have been robbing the school department. Embezzling. He looked at the couple sheets of paper that had been in the safe. They seemed to be a partial accounting of the money in the safe with notes about "CAF", "SUPP" and "ASSEM" and dates.

What to do about it?! What should he do?

After pondering it a while, X's face took on a smirk.

"Yeah. That's it," he muttered to himself while undressing before counting out two separate stacks of $10,000 and $5,000. Then he pondered, where to hide the rest? He decided to leave it under his mattress for now but to bury it in the yard the next day.

In school, on Monday morning, he cracked a joke that had the kids in Mrs. Porter's english class roaring with laughter.

"That's it, Mr. Lee. I don't care if you're getting an A in my class-"

"What're you gonna do, send me to the principal's office? I dare you."

The kids ooo'ed and ahh'ed over this confrontation but it ended very quickly. Mrs. Porter sent X to the principal's office. He seemed nonplussed with the situation, standing there casually waiting for her to write out the slip of paper he would carry to the office, he seemed almost . . impatient. He made a quick stop at his locker to pick something up and strode off to the principal's office. There, there was an undertone of panic in the air. The principal emerged from his office and demanded to know if the cleaning people had been in his room. Things had been moved around, he said. The secretaries said no. The scheduled cleaning wasn't till tomorrow night.

X stepped around the counter that confronted students and, looking at the principal, motioned to his office. "Sir. I think you and I should speak," he said walking inside and sitting down behind the man's desk then putting his feet up on it as the man closed the door angrily behind himself.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? Get out of my chair!"

"Uh uh uh," he waved a finger slowly back and forth at the pudgy middle aged man. "You do want to find out what happened to all that money don't you?"

The man's eyes went wide. But he was caught between competing impulses, wanting desperately to say 'yes' but not wanting to admit the situation.

X grinned. "Oh, don't worry. I know about the money you and, what's that fat guy's name who makes regular visits? The school official who was here Thursday?"

The principal eyed him warily now. "I believe you're speaking of Mr. Rockland."

"Ah, yes, Rockland. Did you already call him about the forty seven thousand dollars?"

The principal reached for the phone. "I'm calling the police on you, you little thieving bastard."

X didn't move or say a word. And he noticed that, while the principal had picked up the phone, he hadn't dialed yet.

"Nine one one," said X helpfully. "But we both know you don't really want to call the cops, do you? They'd use nasty words like . . "embezzler" and the newspaper stories would include phrases like "had his pension revoked". No. You don't want to call the police and we both know it. You want to hear my offer."

"Your offer!? Listen, you little bastard. You stole from me and you're going to give all of it back. What's your name?"

"Xing Fu Lee. "

"Lee . . ? You're that sophomore boy . . . Top of your class . . . right?"

"Uh huh."

"You want to throw that all away right now, whatever promise you have, whatever future you might have made for yourself? You want to throw that all away to steal from your school?"

X burst out laughing. "That was pretty good. I mean, for a bluff with nothing behind it. Get fatty over here right now and I'll tell you two how things are gonna be."

The principal stared angrily at the smiling skinny bastard with his feet still up on his desk. But what option was there. He called and told Rockland to get the hell over there. "No! I can't explain why! Just get over here! Now!". And ten minutes later he was, though he was mystified as to why some kid was sitting behind the principal's desk with his feet up. Then the kid reached into his shirt and removed a tightly wrapped stack of bills and tossed it onto the desk.

"That's five grand," said the kid. "Oh, I'm Xing Fu Lee," he added, introducing himself to Rockland. "I'm a sophomore. I took your forty seven thousand two hundred eighty dollars last night. But I'll give you this five back now-"

"And the rest tomorrow!" demanded the principal.

X chuckled. "I've already called your bluff, chubby. Don't insult me. You have no leverage here. I'll give you five grand more at the end of the year, as long as things go the way I say."

"What about the rest of the money you stole?" asked the distraught Rockland.

"You mean, the money you stole first? Uh . . it's mine now."

"What-what is this 'the way I say' crap?" demanded the principal, already having moved on.

"It's pretty much that simple," explained X. "Any discipline of me disappears. Any discipline of my friends disappears. And I get veto power over any other decision that affects me or my friends."

"No," snapped the principal.

X looked to Rockland. "Is the issue of me or my friends getting a detention worth five thousand dollars to you, too? I'm assuming you two guys were sharing this embezzled money evenly. Do-"

"It wasn't strictly embezzled," corrected Rockland. "Not all of it. Though he-," he pointed to the principal who quickly barked "Shut up, Stan!"

"Oh, shut up yourself, Fred! I'm not gonna lose twenty five hundred dollars so that you can continue to boss one particular kid around."

"And my friends!" corrected X. "So harmless. A few kids, whoever I say, get out of a few detentions and you don't get reported to the police. No letter goes to the school committee, the superintendent and every teacher in this school. You still have your pensions annnnnd you two get five thousand dollars more at the end of the year. Otherwise you get that five and nothing more. What'll it be?"

X enjoyed the angry glances back and forth between the two of them.

"Oh, suck it up," sneered Rockland to the principal. "You're the one who fucked up and got the money stolen. Keep it here. Nothing'll ever happen to it here, you said. Good call, Fred."

With an angry groan, the principal nodded to X.

"How'd you find out about it?" he immediately demanded of X.

"I saw that you had a safe a couple days ago and thought that was kind of odd. So I cracked it and found all your stolen money."

"It-it's not strictly stolen," reiterated Rockland.

"Then what is it?" demanded X.

"It . . a lot of it is money that would have been spent anyway. When Fred and I were going to hire someone to perform at an assembly or a dance, the school district might allot a thousand or two thousand dollars for it. But if we got someone to perform for less . . ."

"And why wouldn't the school know that they had spent less," began X thinking out loud. ". . unless you two made the people you hired officially take two thousand and give you five hundred or a thousand back to get the gig. Kickbacks. That's what you did."

"It's the same deal for the school district," snorted the principal. "What's the difference? And it wasn't just people performing at assemblies. It was everything. Paper. Pens. Food. Especially food."

X snickered. "Yeah, that cafeteria shit tastes like it's as cheap as possible to make your kickbacks possible."

"But, you see the point, don't you?" continued Rockland, much more anxious not to seem like a bad guy than the principal. "It-it really is pretty much the same food you'd have gotten anyway. And everything else was the same. Nothing was different for the school district. But Fred and I made some money by driving good bargains. That's all."

"Yeah, tell that to the cops if it comes to it. In the mean time, I've got another item that you'll have to take care of," he said turning to the principal. "I want you to hire the Jump City School of Ballet to give a performance a couple weeks from now, Friday the . . 17th," he said looking at the man's desk blotter calendar.

"What, have you got a girlfriend dances there?" snickered the principal.

"No. I do."

"What?!"

"You want me to have everyone at school see you dancing ballet?"

"Actually, just the girls if you can arrange it but that's probably not possible, so, yeah, everyone."

"You want a school assembly on a Friday afternoon for the whole school to watch you do some foufou ballet?"

"More like some athletic solos and a few very romantic pas de deux."

"They'll kill you. The boys'll kill you when they find out."

"Not likely. Everyone in the sophomore class already knows I do ballet."

"I hope they do kill you," snorted the principal.

"Uh uh uh. Remember now, Freddy. Things go the way I say or you don't get the other five grand back."

"What're you gonna do with all the rest of the money?" asked Rockland.

"Hide it where you can't find it and invest some of it."

"Invest it?"

X nodded but didn't explain.

At ballet class that afternoon, everyone was excited about the news that they'd been hired to give a performance for X's high school. X had fun pretending to be surprised. Then, after ballet class, he showered and changed and made his way over to the locksmith shop just down the street. He knocked and grinned upon entering and went straight into the back room. He put ten thousand dollars on the old man's desk and watched his eyes get big as saucers.

"What's that?"

"Your cut."

"You did it?! Oh my god. You did it!"

X explained everything to him and told him exactly how much money there'd been. He said that he wasn't sure how much to give him. The old man had said that guys who didn't actively take part weren't entitled to equal shares of a heist but he sure as hell deserved more than nothing. The old man said it was way more than he had to give him. X insisted that the old man take every penny of it.

But he also had a request. "What if I wanted someone to teach me all about alarms or all about some other part of taking down a score? Would you be able to put me in touch with a top guy in the field who could teach me?"

The old man nodded with a smile. This was getting better and better.

"I'd pay you and him and he'd never have to know that I'm Xing Fu Lee and I'd never know that he's Kevin Jackson or Sam Keller or whatever. We'd just be two friends of Mr. Guttman."

"That would work," nodded the old man with another contented smile.

And that's how they did it. The old man contacted a few of his long time connections in the business. It was a pretty sweet gig for them. They stopped by old Guttman's locksmith shop and taught some dark haired kid about alarms or hacking computers or jewels or banks. Each of them got two grand for an afternoon or so of work, paid through Guttman who X had given 4 grand in each instance. It was a sweet deal. A little tutoring in the down time between jobs at a nice price. And the anonymous kid that old Guttman introduced them to was pretty sharp and motivated, a pleasure to teach, actually.

And, at school, things got better and better. At first, X was only helping out a select few kids. Erasing a detention here. Getting someone into the National Honor Society there. And once he had had his tutorial in hacking computers, a few grade adjustments certainly seemed in order. It never became explicit but his reputation built and built till half the school seemed to know or have heard that that sophomre, X, that Xing Fu Lee could fix anything for you. Anything!

He performed with the rest of the Jump City School of Ballet in front of the whole school. He was the only guy, and, really, the star of the school, so he had easily more time on stage than anyone else. It was great advertising. He started going to more parties and had junior and senior girls practically throwing themselves at him. He took advantage of it, making new conquests left and right. Oh, a couple of idiot senior football players tried to make fun of him for being in the ballet, but the first one who forced a fight hit the ground hard. He was better at calling another guy names than protecting against roundhouse kicks. The other one was a better fighter and actually hit X once, but X left him dazed and bleeding on the sidewalk outside the front entrance of the school amid 50 onlookers and after that no one much wanted to say anything about his taking ballet. X also made it a point to do both their girlfriends. And, to judge by their reactions, to do them much better than either of those two doofuses had been doing them.

Life was about as good as it could be for a high school sophomore. The only thing was that an itch had started to develop. X was as flexible as could be. He could do splits front and back or legs out to the side. He could scratch the bottom of his foot while standing if need be. But he couldn't scratch this itch. It was created the night that he stole the money from the principal. High school was boring. It was no challenge to him. Ballet was a bit boring, the classes anyway. But that 15 minutes he'd been all dressed in black, climbing onto the roof of the school and then down to the principal's office, breaking in and making off with all that cash! That had been exciting. He'd been calm the whole time, not jittery or jumpy but it was like an electric current of excitement went through him while he was doing it. What a rush!

He wanted to do it again. He wanted to take down another score. He told the old man how he was feeling. The old man counseled patience. Most of this "job" is the right choice of target and the right preparation, he told X. He talked with X about the scarcity, these days of worthwhile targets, of businesses that operated with a high volume of cash. He and X talked for hours about possible targets before X decided on the Safeco supermarket just down the street. After a couple weeks, the old man had a solid record of when the armored cars picked up money from the place. Monday afternoon and a late week, either Thursday or Friday pickup were the ones made. They decided on a Sunday night heist.

They were well into the planning when X's ballet teacher confronted him about, well, pretty much everything he was doing except the thefts and suggested he enter the Gotham City Ballet scholarship contest. When he won he the contest and left Jump City for Gotham, he left not only his family and friends and a network of influence over the high school but also a well planned score at that Safeco.

The itch that had almost gone away in the course of planning the Safeco heist now returned. But there was nothing he could do while starting as a new student at the Gotham City School of ballet. And then, there was the day after his first big break as a performer filling in for Mr. 100MostBeautiful and earning standing ovations. He was sitting in one of the chairs in the incredible leather and rosewood appointed office of the company's director while the Ballet company's officers were telling him he should accept a long contract that wasn't in his interest.

They were frustrated that they couldn't either entice or intimidate him into accepting their offer. He barely reacted to what they said. His eyes weren't quite on either of them. It annoyed them. These boys were usually so easy to deal with when they first made a big splash and they were offered contracts. But this Xing Fu Lee wasn't having any of it. He wouldn't even look them in the eye as they ranted at them. Eventually, he left the room and they regretted shouting at him like that and decided it was good that the boy wouldn't look them in the eyes, that he was so non-confrontational.

But X had been focusing and what he was seeing and thinking could not have been much less confrontational. There was a painting on the far wall, Degas ballerinas, not surprisingly, in a big, thick wooden frame. But the frame hung oddly. If you looked closely, it seemed to hug the wall on the right side and maybe just slightly separate from the wall on the left, as if it wasn't hung at all, as if . . .

No, the company directors agreed, after he'd left the room, they wished they'd handled it differently. The boy's going to be a tremendous star. They'd never had an athlete like that, six feet tall, not bigger than some others but an incredible athlete. They shouldn't have shouted at him like that. But he had to be put in his place a bit. Still, he hadn't taken it too badly. He'd had that odd smile on his face that last minute or so.


	9. The Story of Red X, Part 3, Master Thief

Seeing the likely location of a safe in the Gotham City Ballet's company director's office had been a catalyst for Xing Fu Lee. And it had come at just the right time, becausey, X couldn't stick entirely to one thing. He had too much energy. He only slept four or, at most, five hours a night. And he was almost too good at pretty much everything he did, whether it was a physical or intellectual challenge. He enjoyed pretty much everything he did. Sticking to just one thing was difficult for him. Everything interested him.

It had been tough at first. He was the new boy at Gotham City Ballet's school headquartered in their building. The school groomed most of the dancers for one of the most prestigious companies in the world. The instructors were especially hard on him at first. He suspected they wanted to take him down a peg, him the scholarship winner. But he could out leap any other boy in the school and he was stronger than them, too, even though only a few were skinnier than him. He was the most impressive athlete the school had ever had in tights. Six feet and 165 pounds of coiled spring fast twitch muscle. He was pretty sure the instructors were intentionally giving him unfair criticism, but he just focused as intensely as possible in ballet class the first few months in Gotham. Every little thing had to be absolutely perfect. He could leap higher than any of the other boys, spin faster than any of them, carry a ballerina higher, more easily and put her down more gracefully and at the end the instructors would still be shouting, "Point your toes, X!". Even when he had done a better job of pointing his toes than any of the other boys. The criticism would always be of him.

Some boys, weak ones or insecure ones, maybe most of them, would have felt persecuted by such treatment. Other boys, the strongest ones, the most secure ones, would have snapped back angrily at the unfairness of it and demanded an end to the critcism. It came to be a regular feature of dance class. And the other kids marveled at it. The new kid, mister pretty boy scholarship winner was the instructors' whipping boy despite being such an amazing dancer. But he never said anything despite, they all found out over time, being a complete wiseass. So, they waited for some kind of blowup, some kind of confrontation or spectacular scene, a rebellion, a revolt against the unfairness of their overbearing instructors.

It never happened. X had such complete confidence in himself that it didn't bother him. X saw the big picture. A bit of unfair carping about the angle of his arm displaying a ballerina didn't mean a damn thing to him. His sense of his own exceptionalism was so strong that these words bounced right off X. He made sure he did everything perfectly the next time and made the instructor try to find something else. And his confidence let him immediately see the bigger picture that this would make him a better ballet dancer. And he was going to be the best. Of that he had no doubt. He was Xing Fu Lee.

The instructors weren't being sadistic. They saw that the skinny pretty boy with the butt could take it. There was something about him that he just couldn't be shaken. And he never complained about it. A lot of the time it served to critique the other boys in the class anyway. They would get on X for some infinitessimal flaw in his spin or his technique, or one that wasn't even there, and the others, who hadn't done the steps nearly as well as X knew they'd better keep their heads down and work on it. If X could get such a ration of shit when he was practically perfect . . . gulp.

It impressed the other kids, that he was so incredibly good and yet caught all this flak from the instructors but didn't let it bother him. A lot of the boys came to be fairly intimidated by the will he showed. A lot of the girls were even more attracted to him. What sort of boy was so strong that he could just shrug off all of it . . . ?

And, at a certain point, it was hard to say just when, X started to sense that the cause of the hypercritical way the instructors treated him had shifted. It was no longer almost a sort of hazing or a way of showing the new boy that this school had higher standards than some place out in freaking Jump City. You're in Gotham City, now, pretty boy! He sensed that they knew how good he was and wanted to push him to be as good as possible. Once or twice he overheard them talking to the company director about him and it was 180 degrees different from all the carping he heard in class.

. . going to be fantastic!

. . best we've ever had!

. . finally won't have to import a star from russia.

They didn't say these things to him in class. But, then, it wouldn't have mattered if they'd never said them. He was Xing Fu Lee.

Then, the ballet company's long time star messed up his knee in the middle of a performance and X took his place and drew standing ovations by the end of the night. X had arrived. Now everyone knew he would be a star including the general public. That was when the company directors called him up to their office and offered him a contract that he'd have been an idiot to have signed. At first, they cajoled and pleaded with him. They acted like they were doing him a tremendous favor. Him, Xing Fu Lee! Then they shouted at him and tried to intimidate him. What if you blow out your knee tomorrow, Xing Fu? But they couldn't budge him. It was at that meeting that he saw the painting that he figured hid a safe.

He'd put a massive amount of energy into his complete dedication to improving his dancing. Maybe he'd been half as good as he could be when he first got there more than athlete enough but not polished. Now he was something on the order of 95% as good as he could ever be. He'd still work to improve but the biggest part of the struggle to be great was over. He'd done it. He was a star only needing the opportunity to show it performance after performance. There wasn't too much more he could do to become an even better ballet dancer. But he still had all that energy, all that fire of will that had gone into making himself better. And now the idea of that wall safe started to intrigue him, to fascinate him and eventually to challenge him.

He was going to have to rob it. This would be the goal toward which he'd direct all his overflow of energy. It kept him running at top speed, in a way, to have another outlet for his drive. And it felt refreshing to be planning out a heist. X liked being a ballet dancer but the whole thing could be such a privileged, protected sort of atmosphere, like being society's hothouse flower of the arts. It felt odd. Being completely the opposite, an outlaw and a thief at the same time, that felt like balance to X. High society and heisting at the same time.

His acclimation to repitition in the pursuit of perfection in ballet served him well. X meticulously planned out the job, remembering everything that old man Guttman and the various heisting tutors had taught him. X had the job planned out and was almost ready to find out what was in that safe when he got the chance to be in that commercial alongside Kobe Bryant.

After rejecting the petulant jackass NBA star's attempted dunks twice in a row, fame exploded on him. And, where the Gotham City Ballet's directors had angrily kept him from the best roles in the months after he'd first burst on the public scene, now they couldn't feature him enough. He was a public relations and box office godsend for them.

Their effete little cultural backwater had actual street cred! One of their boys had rejected Kobe Bryant twice. On video. And while wearing tights and a top, while dressed as though dancing in a ballet! Their guys weren't all wimps and wusses! They weren't all gay. Oh, if they could just tell the press half the rumors about Xing Fu Lee they could dispel that idea. But, the parents of the girls at the school of the Gotham City Ballet probably didn't want to hear the school assure the general public that Xing Fu Lee had apparently fucked all but one or two girls in the school over the age of 14. All of a sudden, reviews of their performances weren't 4 column inches on page 37 of the times. They were above the fold on the front page of the Arts section of the Gotham City Times. Xing Fu Lee got his picture on the front page and the ballet got consistent air time in all the local news broadcasts.

There was a crush of publicity focused on X, specifically, and he didn't exactly shy away from it. He got as many ballerinas as possible onto TV interviews and talk shows with him though he didn't do much for the other guys. But then he wasn't trying to fuck all of them. He did fuck all the ballerinas, even the older ones.

And with his notoriety, not only the Gotham City Ballet's long time backers and patrons wanted to meet the new sensation, Xing Fu Lee, the ballet dancer who could block Kobe Bryant's shots. Everyone with money and prestige in Gotham City seemed to want to meet him. X was invited into so many incredibly rich homes in the 13 more months he danced with the company that he lost track of them all. And he was trying to keep track of them all. He'd get back from spending four hours at some rich banker's house, being fawned over by the man's younger trophy wife, every one of them thinking she was being risque by commenting about how good his buns looked in tights, and he would feverishly write notes about everything he'd seen. Jewelry. Paintings. Possible wall safes. Possible floor safes. Anything they said. They were so busy openly checking him out that they never noticed him more discreetly casing the joint.

He played his part. There were a few options based on what their expectations were. Mostly he was the quiet intellectual type, a bit shy, totally dedicated to his craft. I live for the dance. Something like that. And he gave them bits of other things as appropriate to get them to say the right things to him. He found that really rich people wouldn't talk about their baubles and bullion if he made up a story and told them his family was poor. He'd tried that route once just to see how it played. But that seemed to introduce guilt. They felt at least a little bad about lording it over on a poor boy. But if he told them the truth, about the affluent upper middle class home he'd come from, they would go into high gear, competitive spirit then being okay, and show off all their trinkets. They loved lording it over on the middle class. Loved it. It made it easier for X to see them as targets, not that it was ever that hard.

As far as him, they must have believed him to be harmless. It was perfectly safe to talk about things in front of him, wasn't it? This pretty boy was a ballet dancer for god's sake! A ballet dancer! Maybe a fruit or a switch hitter even if he had rejected Kobe Bryant twice.

Yup, that's 25 carats, Xing Fu. See how it catches the light?

You don't know what a bearer bond is? Let me show you the ones I got through Goldman Sachs.

I bought that painting on the right for three point two million. That's by Turner. My art guy tells me I could sell it for five, now. Five!

Only a few of them seemed to have any inkling of what a dangerous sort of animal this extremely handsome dark haired boy they brought into all their mansions really was. One was a blonde trophy wife whose old husband nodded off in the middle of dinner, just dropped face down into his plate. X got up and checked his pulse and breathing then smirked and moved the man's face out of the rice pilaf and onto a napkin then brought the trophy wife up to her bedroom and did her right there while the old man snoozed. Forty minutes later they went back downstairs, wolfed down most of their food and jarred the table just enough to rouse him. Oh yes, that blonde knew what an energetic, forceful athlete Xing Fu Lee was and how single minded he could be. But she didn't see what else he was after. No one did and X reveled in their misjudgement of him.

Finally, he robbed the safe behind the painting in the company director's office. It was 3 floors up, 8 stories above the street and at the other end of the building that housed the company's ballet school, the school's dormitory rooms and the studio practice areas with their glass walls facing busy Gotham City streets. But, elsewhere, the exterior walls of the building were gray stone. It was the classic sort of "respectable" facade. Safe and boring and imposing looking and with lots of places where a great athlete could get a toe or finger hold and climb up. And that's what X did. He had made notes of all the traffic patterns around the building and the apparent times of surrounding buildings being occupied. He changed into some gray under armour stuff that matched the color of the stone facade and a mask and, at 3 AM Thursday morning climbed out his own dorm window and up the side of the building. He made his way over to a window into the director's office and, using a small but very powerful magnet, got the lock on the window to move to the unlocked position then climbed in. He went straight to the painting and, sure enough, it swung out on one side revealing a stainless steel faced wall safe just over a foot square. He went right to work on the dial and cracked it in under a minute.

Just as with the principal's safe, he was greeted by a wonderful surprise. Stacks of one hundred dollar bills in their neat paper wrappers with a bank's name stamped on them. X calmly transferred them all to the small bag he'd had over his shoulders. About sixty thousand he quickly estimated. Maybe it wasn't stolen or embezzled by the guy but whether or not this was true didn't much concern X. He was going to take it whether it was or not.

It was funny, the next day, X was so completely focused on his dancing he amazed even the instructors. The need to thieve had been sated. But he knew it would return. It always would.

X knocked over two mansions and a high rise condo in his remaining time in Gotham City. Each heist was meticulously planned out. One mansion had alarm circuitry that he dealt with as he'd been taught by one of old man Guttman's friends. A sort of a patch across circuits left the alarm's signals in a sort of never ending loop, never getting out of the house. And while the system's frantic alarms went round and round but never out, X went in. He took the painting bought for three point two million and purportedly worth five, carrying it off in the plastic tube he slung over his shoulder.

Another mansion had both guards and an alarm. The huge, beefy guards, two coke machine sized doofuses in leather jackets, turned out to have glass jaws. X sucker punched them both in turn, taking them by surprise and taking them out with one punch each. Neither much saw him and he had a ski mask over his face. They might be able to recall that a skinny guy 6 feet tall knocked them out but nothing more. This mansion's alarm was a much more intricate affair and it took X several minutes to adequately pacify it. Dressed all in black, he sprinted upstairs to the wife's incredible stash of jewelry and in the extra 90 seconds he'd allowed himself he found and cracked a floor safe, making off with a bag stuffed with cash and diamonds as the two huge goons were just waking up.

The high rise condo was his favorite job. It was a floor up from one he'd been in. It was owned by someone even richer than the couple who had him over for dinner. They'd been 33% of the Gotham City Ballet's budget in some years. but the guy a floor up was richer still. Much richer. X went into the building with a mask and a perfect looking blond wig. Let them look at that on the security video. Then, he broke into one elevator shaft, jumped atop an elevator as it shot up past his floor and leaped off to a utility walkway that led from that shaft to the supposedly secured elevator up to the exclusive 15 million dollar penthouses. It was a pleasure to loot that place. The guy had been a top official in the Clinton administration and was now fucking up one of the biggest banks in the country while somehow getting paid a huge salary, a monstrous salary. X had talked to a caterer who had delivered something there. He'd found that a certain top end caterer had done the wife's birthday party a few months back. There was a picture in the society pages of the Gotham City Times. He went by the caterer and made up a story. He was one of he guests at that party. He'd lost something. Which of their guys worked it? Gary and Julio? Thanks. He sent two thousand dollars in cash to Julio at his home address and called him from a throwaway cell phone. The man was hesitant to say anything at first even though X only asked him one question. What kind of lock do they have on the door in the hallway? The man hesitated again. X pointed out that the man was $2,000 richer already. Eight more will join those two if you just answer one question. What kind of lock do they have on the door in the hallway? The man still hesitated. X could tell, he was pretty much a straight arrow. He changed tactics.

"How well did they treat you?" X asked.

The line was quiet for several seconds. "Like dirt, he finally answered, "like peasant servants or something. Fuckin' assholes."

"So . . what kind of lock do they have on the door in the hallway?"

The man described in detail the sort of swipe card lock, like a hotel door, that the place had.

"Eight more in a week," said X then he hung up. He had needed to know. He would go after it that night and not give Julio time to change his mind. But he had to know. Someone that outrageously rich might have almost anything. And he couldn't whip out a black and decker saw to get through the door. Security made random checks of the public areas once or twice a night. And there was another massive condo on the other side of the hall. Each of these condos took up a half floor of the building. X was stunned at how big the place was when he closed the door behind himself and pocketed his special swipe card. You could play tennis in there if you didn't hit any lobs. But their taste was disappointing. The paintings were modern shit, bought hoping that other idiots equally gullible for the latest emperor has no clothes brand of art would buy it off them for even more. He took them all. He took all the jewelry in the bedroom though he wasn't especially impressed by it and he took a little light blue vase off a table in a hallway. That turned out to be worth more than anything else.

X made it out without a hitch, switching to another mask and a red hair wig in the utility walk between the elevator shafts and strolling right out past the security guys dressed like some rich slacker kid in oversized jeans and jacket with a skate board over his shoulder helping to disguise the fact that he had a plastic tube full of paintings and a bag of jewelry and a vase under his oversized jacket. He acted, for a moment, as though he was about to pull the board off his back and start skateboarding across the polished marble floor but stopped and smiled. "I know. I know. No boarding in the building. Just messin' with you guys," he said to the guards. They rolled their eyes at the stupid kid, one of too many to count among the rich assholes on the top 20 floors.

X had a great time reading the newpaper articles about his scores. For the condo job they eventually settled on either a blond guy or a redhead but they weren't sure which. For the two mansions, they had no idea. Same thing with the Gotham City Ballet's safe in the director's office. They had no idea. Only belatedly did they even bother to question some of the students. It was sooooooo easy to fool the cops. Now X understood how some crooks couldn't resist toying with them. It was so easy. The got to the L's just after his morning class. X loved it. His name was called on the intercom and he went up to the conference room off the director's office still in tights and a t-shirt. He had to work not to laugh at the way the cops looked at him. It was tempting. But X played it flatline low key. Nothing. He gave them nothing, no inkling how far beyond everyone's control he was. A few perfunctory questions and he was out of there. Between every line they spoke was their unspoken preconception. None of you artsy wusses could possibly have done this. He did a leap and a spin before leaving the room just to further cement their disregard for him.

And, of course, all the evidence was gone. X had an arrangement with old man Guttman. He sent everything back to him, Fedex. And the old man got 10% of the take for acting as the bank. He also made all the contacts with fences to turn jewelry, painting and innocuous looking light blue Ming dynasty vases into hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The old man was no comfortably well off and moved to a slightly better little house but spent each day at the same little locksmith shop, no one the wiser that he was the conduit for the transfer and re-sale of over ten million dollars of stolen cash, bonds, jewelry and art. The money was all in a safe deposit box in the name of a false ID that Guttman had had made for him. Xavier Pierce. X thought it was dumb to have kept either initial but when he told the old man that he always went by just 'X', the old man thought it was wise. Xavier Pierce had two extra large sized safety deposit boxes at the First National Bank of Jump City and later an account at one of the smaller but most discreet swiss banks.

It was a wonderful life filled with contrasts. When X thought back to his year starring for the Gotham City Ballet as a 16 and 17 year old, he would remember screwing all those ballerinas. He'd remember party after party at the most exclusive clubs in the city. He'd remember screwing actresses on the rise and a couple of the biggest names in the music industry. Sure hundreds of guys had been there before him in Ms. Yoga and her 50 year old vajayjay but the woman sure appreciated a ballet dancer's backside. Damn. He'd remember making ballet significant again. He'd remember all the roles he'd danced and the feeling of exhausted satisfaction at the end of a performance as the audience jumped out of their seats with a standing ovation. And he'd remember robbing the school, the Carletons, the Burkes and the Rubins. For now he was not only a master dancer but also a master thief.

His year in Paris was equally full of contrasts. To begin with, X spoke french nearly fluently, having taken 7 years of it in Jump city. But he decided to keep this to himself and betrayed only a minimal ability with the language at the Paris Opera Ballet where he now danced. Many times, ballerinas said things to each other that they didn't think X understood but that he did. So foolish, he smiled to himself. Why wouldn't he know the french for 'huge penis' and 'best sex I ever had'?

The Paris Opera Ballet, the premier company in France, had two russians, a cuban, a pole, a dane and three french guys competing for the lead male roles with him. The only thing that seemed to unite them was that they all hated americans. At least that's how they acted toward X at first. He'd heard that they'd be stupid like this but it still surprised him.

No matter. The ballerinas were a little more open minded. And he was a better athlete than the other guys who'd been partnering them. The other guys hated him, they were jealous the first time he showed in their studio how he could leap. The ballerinas were impressed and . . intrigued. And the ballerinas also immediately appreciated how strong the slender a-mare-ee-cane was. X established what a great ballet dancer he was and even the french audiences reluctant to embrace an american ended up cheering and shouting his name at the end of performances. The french also put great stock in acting the part, in forcefully creating the impression that you really were a king or a prince, dark or light. They were shocked that this 17 year old a-mare-ee-cane boy did it so well.

And, as in Gotham City, X became a regular on the highest level of the Paris party circuit. No one cared at all that he was under 21 in Paris. There were occasional rocky moments early on but X's acceptance was aided by the discovery of what an intellectual sort he was. The irony was that he encountered a lot of french who met him with a presumption that any american would be dumb. They professed over and over their dedication to intellectual life. But, of the ones he got to know well enough to say, almost none seemed to like intellectual life as much as they liked the appearance of liking intellectual life. Maybe he'd just met the wrong ones. But he doubted it.

No matter. He was banging french girls left and right. Around fifty in that year. He didn't count. He didn't need to. He was Xing Fu Lee. Who did he need to impress? And, just as in Gotham City, he was being introduced to the elite rich patrons of the arts and every moment he was with them he was sizing them up or casing their homes, their palatial 12 foot ceiling ornate as a piece of Versailles homes. They smiled across the dinner table at le plus beau garcon americain. He smiled back, joy in his carmel brown eyes, looking at their jewelry and paintings.

His lack of familiarity with the city made X extra careful in planning and executing his heists in and around Paris but he still pulled off 5 jobs in a year there compared to just three other than the school in his last year in Gotham City. Just as he'd practiced and practiced and performed and performed and honed his athletic and artistic talents till he was a great ballet dancer, X had practiced and practiced and heisted and heisted till he was a master thief. In almost the same way as he enjoyed exercising his abilities on a stage, he got great satisfaction from flawlessly taking down big scores. He almost had a sixth sense now for where the valuables would be in any home. He almost felt like he could just look at a rich couple and guess exactly what those valuables would be. The whole rich man, trophy wife thing was just as prevalent in France, though some of the rich french men had almost open mistresses. One patron of the ballet was introduced to him beside a much younger brunette with fascinating green almond shaped eyes and full lips so well suited to her cute pout of an expression. Now, there's a really top notch trophy wife he'd thought kissing her hand backstage right after a performance. Oh. She's the mistress, someone told him right out front in everyone else, as if it was common knowledge. X didn't know what to say and the brazen hottie even patted his ass, murmuring 'quel cul t'as!' while he was trying to assimilate this information. French society could be pretty wild.

But, while they all pretended to look down on american culture, they simultaneously desperately wanted to show him that they kept up with it, that they knew what was going on in the states. He smirked at references to "zee 'ip 'op" and their assumptions that all americans were pretty much alike. At one dinner party, a woman asked him if he was friends with Robin. X looked at her like she was crazy. She thought everyone in the U.S. was completely captivated by the rise of metahuman heroes, not that the little squirt was remotely metahuman. But she thought he was almost X's age and he was in Gotham City, after all. So when she saw some footage of Robin jumping around following Batman that made him seem almost like a ballet dancer, too, she thought that Xing Fu Lee probably knows him. X quickly corrected her that he was most definitely not friends with some midget "sidekick" who pranced around in a green speedo and elf shoes. What does thees 'sidekick' mean, she asked. Little loser who can't make it on his own, X told her. What about zee Keed Flahsh, another woman at the dinner party asked. X rolled his eyes. Not as much a loser as Robin, said X, but if there are fashion victims, that dude's a fashion casualty. Everyone laughed. X often felt like he was these people's sole conduit to what the States was actually like. At least some frenchmen wouldn't have the wrong idea about us.

Mostly, though, he very much liked the french women. They had such a strong sense of how to play the romance game. There were no misconceptions with them. When, upon meeting her, he told a french ballerina or a french fashion model that he wasn't looking for a long term relationship, they understood. There weren't any of the occasional angry scenes when an american girl found out that X meant exactly what he said. He was having a great time meeting and bedding ballerinas and models when he wasn't shmoozing rich people on behalf of the Paris Opera Ballet and scoping out their mansions for robbery in the process.

Fashion week in Paris was a particularly fun time for him. Each night, a different girl, a different model who'd been on the cover of Vogue, done editorial campaigns for this or that perfume, or who was just so smoking hot that you knew she would in the future. The last night of the week, he was at a party in the 16th arrondissement, one of the richest sections of Paris. There were about 30 people there. But the models just didn't do it for him. Hot but not in quite teh right way and, there was no way around it, dumb. Freaking stupid. Ugh. He liked 'em smart. Clever. Interesting. There was a french male model there, a ridiculously good looking blond guy named Jeremy, who was also working the room. And he seemed to have the same feeling as X. They commiserated at the bar and X was surprised to find that this Jeremy had a great sense of humor. But then Jeremy said the same thing about him. A ballet dancer? Funny? They both left intending to go to their separate apartments. Jeremy offered him a ride and they talked and laughed on the way and when they got to X's building they looked at each other in the half light of the small car and both knew. X stammered out that he'd never done anything like this before. Jeremy said that he hadn't either. But they both went up to X's apartment and Jeremy only left the next morning.

X didn't feel any shame or confusion. He liked Jeremy. Jeremy liked him. He still prefered girls and went out with a ballerina the next night. And it occurred to him that maybe, just as he wasn't completely part of high society or the world of crime he would always have a foot in every part of society. It didn't matter. He was Xing Fu Lee. He could do anything.

The police never got onto his trail. As far as they knew, he was only the star ballet dancer that everyone saw from afar. He was never even questioned about any of the heists he pulled. But, in the last few weeks he was in Paris, he started to have a vague sense that he was being followed. He mentioned as much to the Vogue cover model with whom he was walking down the boulevard one night. She laughed and said something about X thinking he was living in some sort of crime or spy novel. X said nothing. He pulled her in close to him and kissed her, reaching under her full length coat to massage her breasts with one hand. ". . Oh . . X . . " she gasped as they continued to kiss. But despite his manual ministrations, X was not as completely invested in their necking as she was. While they kissed, he looked past her with one opened eye and at last he saw what he was looking for, two silhouettes in a parked car. He noted the make, model and color of the car. And then he put his other hand on her breasts and kissed her without reserve.

"Oh . . X!"

He saw that same car a few days later and again a few days after that. Once in the 7th arrondissement and then in Auteuil, outside the mansion of a rich patron of the ballet who had invited X and a couple other dancers to dinner. And each time there would be two silhouettes the same size in it and it was parked a half mile away, just barely in a position to see him. He started marking his own apartment door, leaving something tiny, barely perceptible, a hair or a tiny scrap of paper held in place by the closed door so that the sight of it on the floor in the hall would reveal to him that someone had opened his door and been in his apartment.

A few days later, he came back from practice at the ballet's streetside studio and saw the hair on which he'd carefully closed his door lying on the floor in the hallway. X took a deep breath. Run or go in?

He decided to go in. He didn't think anyone had anything on him. He guessed that maybe they would go through his place looking for something. But just as with his Gotham City jobs, he'd fedexed everything to old man Guttman in Jump City. He had some books, workout clothes, ballet tights and outfits, and some food in his furnished apartment. Nobody would find anything, not even anything to connect him to old man Guttman. But, when he went in, X could see that someone had tried. They'd tried to find . . something. Who knows what? He had left his books and things in very specific positions and lots of things seemed to have been slightly moved. Someone had lightly tossed his place.

X couldn't stand not having the upper hand, wondering what someone else might do next, why they were shadowing him. He furiously went through his options and decided to fight fire with fire. First, he drew the blinds and set up a stack of books, wider at the base and half as wide at the top, covered it with a shirt and topped it with a beret he'd been given by a ballerina and set it up at his desk lit so as to be vaguely visible as his silhouette but not seen clearly enough to be discerned as not him. Then he dressed all in black and went down the hall. There was only one door out of his apartment building except for ground floor units lived in by some families. He couldn't go through there. But the trash chute emptied into a dumpster behind the building, too. He dove in, slid down and went flying into a relatively cushioned landing against trash bags. He got out and circled a half mile out before coming back toward the rue on which he lived. Sure enough, there, just barely within sight of his front door was that same car. X snuck up to a Citroen 6 cars back of them and waited and watched them. he pressed a button and the lights went off in his apartment. After another 25 minutes, when they got tired of watching nothing happen in there, the car started. X frantically broke into and hot wired the Citroen and tailed them.

They drove to a non-descript parking lot beside a small warehouse in a crappy neighborhood on the mostly crappy north side of Paris and one guy got out. In the light, X got a look at them. Both had short cropped hair and a look about them that screamed "Cop!". They said good night and X had to pick one to follow. He chose the one who'd been passenger and followed him to an apartment building in the 15th arrondissement, a mile south of the Eiffel Tower, making note of his car and its license plate, too. He watched the guy go in and then X parked his stolen car. As luck would have it, there was a police station right there. He left it in their lot, looked for a light to go on in a window in the guy's building. When one did, he rushed to the door and figured out that it was one of three different french names or "Carreker". He went back to the street and disabled the alarm on the guy's car and looked in the glove box. He found registration papers saying the car belonged to "Overseas Investments Ltd" and a letter addressed to Paul Carreker at that building and from Sue Carreker of Schaumberg, Illinois. She seemed to be talking to her brother. It was all about their parents' troubles with no hint of what he really did.

But X smirked. Now he had some info. He slashed one of the guy's tires just for the hell of it then loped off down the rue toward the Paris subway. Two days later, they let the dancers out early and X practically sprinted out a back entrance of the place while the others were streaming out the front entrance. He made his way to the guy's apartment building and snuck in as a young woman left. She smiled at the glimpse of handsome X but he had no time for it now. He raced up the stairs and picked the lock on the guy's door. The info wasn't right out in the open but poking around a little, X soon became convinced that Paul Carrker was some kind of spook or quasi cop. He found an odd tiny camera and a set of old, probably broken surveillance microphones in a desk. The key was to figure out what this "Overseas Investments Ltd" was.

Luckily, the other guy was not as careful as Paul Carreker. Waiting for the two of them at that same crappy warehouse a few nights later, X followed the other guy. He lived in a bit lower class area than Carreker, indicating that Carreker had the higher rank. His name was Nolan Keller. X broke into Keller's place the next day and, deep in a desk drawer, found an ID badge to get him into a National Security Administration, NSA, office in Virginia. There was also a note on a pad about "Section Chief Carreker". X took the ID badge with him and got the hell out of there.

But, the idea of the NSA shadowing him perplexed him. They didn't do regular policing. Why would they be following him? He formulated a couple general ideas but waited to see what their next move would be.

Finally, a week later, X had just finished a performance, dancing the role of Albrecht in Giselle. He was still in costume back at the door of his dressing room accepting some roses from a pair of school girls, very pretty but, alas, only about 12. He was smiling and merci'ing them when two men with shortcropped hair in dark suits approached down the hallway. X could not help himself.

"If you're going to pretend to be gay admirers, you two should at least kiss," he whispered to them. The two men looked at him in horror. "People are watching," said X and he nodded to the side where some other fans were asking for the autographs of other dancers. "Kiss!" he whispered frantically motioning for them to get together with his hands then nearly burst out laughing as the two NSA agents turned their heads toward each other and had the least enthusiastic kiss in human history.

"Good job section chief Carreker and agent Keller," he chuckled under his breath. Their eyes went wide in shock.

"Are you guys actually ballet fans? Or do you just like following young guys around Paris?"

As expected, they got pissed off. He hoped they might make a mistake as a result. It turned out not to matter. They followed him into his small dressing room and left the door ajar so as not to attract suspicion. Keller glanced frantically at the door every couple seconds to make sure no one listened in. X started undressing right in front of them as they spoke.

"Listen, Lee. We're gonna cut to the chase here. We saw you take down the Vigo place out in Neuilly."

"I don't know what you're talking about Section Chief Carreker."

"How the hell do you know who we are?" demanded Keller.

X only smiled.

"We know you took it down, Lee. We don't quite get the two sides of your coin being pretty boy ballet dancer and master fucking thief but we know that those are the two sides come up when it's tossed."

"Like you guys tossed my apartment. I should thank you for not making a mess. But I have no idea what you're talking about," he smiled, "I mean, other than you two guys who just kissed outside my dressing room thinking I'm a pretty boy."

Keller grumbled. Carreker continued as X finished stripping and stepped into his shower leaving the door open so that he could hear them.

"We saw you, Lee. We saw someone in black leave the grounds and followed him. It wasn't easy. I give you credit. You ducked into that auto parts place then you made your way to the subway and back to your place but it was you."

"Do you have any proof of this or do you just like making wild allegations, Section Chief?" asked X from under the spray as he soaped up.

"No, we don't have any proof. We're not here to arrest you or investigate you," said Carreker. "We're here to ask for your help."

X looked out at them past the spray as he was rinsing off then turned off the shower, stepped out in full view of them and started drying off. "Let's pretend that you aren't actually spinning a tale of fantasy and continue. Why were you outside this guy Vigo's fricking chateaux of a house? Why were you outside his place?"

Carreker glanced at Keller while X continued drying off. "What do you know about Vigo, Lee?"

"Um, a patron of the arts, a super rich guy who had me and some other dancers out to his place a few months back."

"Also assistant to the foreign minister and their point man on dealing with Iraq."

"Um . . . yeah?" said X intentionally drying off his equipment in full view of them. "Oh. Sorry," he added. "I wasn't thinking about how small you guys might be, didn't mean to embarass you."

Keller grunted an expletive under his breath. Carreker continued. "France took a bribe," he started. "Hussein did a deal with them paying them off to vote against having the United Nations take any action agaisnt Iraq. We're sure of it. But we can't find the documents, the papers with signatures. Vigo was the point man. We've already been through his office. Nothing."

X pulled on boxer shorts. "Maybe his superiors have these documents."

"No. We've been there, too. We think his bosses didn't want any copies of the paper work to exist. Kind of embarassing to take a public stand saying how moral you are and be found out to be on the take. We think Vigo has copies as blackmail ammunition. Like, even think of letting me go and these documents get out. That sort of thing."

X combed his hair and looked at them in the mirror. "Okay, I'll bite. Where do I appear in this fantasy?"

"We tried to rob his place. We didn't even get past the topiary 200 yeards out. We tripped alarms we didn't even know were there. You got in and out and fleeced the guy. How? And . . . well . . would you do it again for us?"

X pulled on his dress pants and then shirt without saying a word till he started buttoning his shirt. "So . . . my country wants me to rob people for it?"

Carreker shrugged. "Certain people. Yes. You could phrase it that way."

X pulled on his socks and shoes. "I'm not even going to be in Paris two weeks from now. I'm going to Moscow for six months then to St. Petersburg for 6 months. The Bolshoi then the Kirov, he said and did an elegant spin in the toes of one dress shoe.

To his surprise, that didn't put an end to it. Carreker and Keller didn't seem disappointed. They almost seemed to perk up.

"Really?" asked Carreker.

"Yup. First time an american dancer goes there to star instead of the other way around."

"And . . you'll probably be going to dinner at the homes of super rich so called patrons of the arts out there, too, right."

"Absolutely," said X combing his hair again. "They love doing that sort of thing. They love staring at us up close."

"How would you like to do your same thing but with some . . technological support?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Section Chief Carreker, but keep talking."

KF***KF***KF***KF***KF***KF***KF

Author's note: Sorry this is so long. Up next, The Story of Red X pt IV of IV-- Super Thief


	10. The Story of Red X, Part 4, Russia

_Author's note: I had to break this one up into two. The next one will follow quickly._

Xing Fu Lee did not like Moscow.

Jump City, where he'd grown up, had occasional snow. Jump City had cold snaps. But this was fucking ridiculous. When he went outside it was in a thick fur coat and fur hat. Fuck PETA. And his teeth still chattered. The average daily high that December was 7. Seven degrees fahrenheit. Seven!

It sounded even worse in celsius.

Minus 14.

You were owed heat or something, weren't you, if the temperatures were minus? Somebody owed a weather debt to you. Xing Fu Lee certainly felt like someone owed him some heat. At least the young women of Moscow were doing their best to compensate To be a ballet star in Moscow, an american come to Moscow to dance with the Bolshoi, an American who had humiliated NBA star Kobe Bryant was to be some combination of sports hero and rock star to muscovites. There was almost no challenge to it, to getting these russian girls to go down on him or to jump in bed with him. Though, he had started to worry, to wonder if, in extreme cold a tongue could only get stuck to a pole made of metal.

No. Celebrity Xing Fu Lee had no trouble finding new extracurricular conquests in Moscow. On the contrary, fending off the unwanted ones was more of a challenge for him.

He'd come to Moscow with great fanfare. "American ballet star who humiliated Kobe Bryant to dance with Bolshoi", said the Moscow papers in their funny cyrillic letters, their 33 letter alphabet. X had started studying russian while he was still in Paris but didn't quite master it till a month into his time in Moscow despite all his work with the cd's, dvd's and books. What kind of language has an alphabet with 33 letters, anyway, he groused to himself. But he had to master it. He had to know exactly what the staff at the Bolshoi wanted him to do. He had to be as technically proficient as humanly possible. Everyone told him that they were nuts about that sort of thing at the Bolshoi and Kirov. In Paris, they wanted you to be charismatic, to act the part, to make the audience believe that you really were the dark prince. They loved how X could totally make audiences believe he was good or bad.

In Moscow and St. Petersburg, everyone told him, they obsessed over the tilt of your head, the angle of your torso, the exact angle of your outstetched leg, your posture. They obsessed about this stuff, the dancers in Paris had told him. They expected technical perfection, even when it didn't seem to be adding a damn thing to your perfromance. You see, the guys in the ballet in Paris told him, even though ballet had been invented by the french, and all the terms of the choreography were french, arabesque, ballon, entrechat, pas de deux, plie, etc, all of them, the russians considered themselves to be the ones preserving classical ballet for the world.

X rededicated himself to improving his dancing. He had to. It was like when he first went to the Gotham City Ballet's school all over again. The staff was always on his ass about one thing or another. They had a preconceived notion of what he would be like and just went with it even when he wasn't like that. He wasn't a lazy dancer who didn't care about posture and the finer points of classical ballet technique. But it took a month of verbal abuse before they finally accepted that. At least it helped him learn the russian version of most derogatory slang terms. But more than those words, he quickly learned the russian word for 'again'. It sound like "yaat". It was the soundtrack of ballet class for him those first few months. Yaat. Yaat. Yaat!

X would leap high enough to dunk a basketball, come down, execute a series of spins, pick up a bellerina and-Yaat! Do it again. Over and over. It was like they were suggesting that those should be the lyrics to the Tchaikovsky piano pieces playing while he and the other dancers practiced.

Rising crescendo. Yaat!

Slowly building tempo. Yaat!

Even a silent dance studio. Yaat!

YaatYaatYaat YaatYaatYaatYaatYaat.

God damn but there were determined to give the pretty boy american a hard time. He might have said the instructors acted as though they were drunk with power but X would have to do so before 5 o'clock. Calling any russian drunk metaphorically after five had a very great likelihood of being redundant. They drank like fish, at least every one he seemed to come across in a bar or club. Three hard drinks was nothing at all. Five in a few hours was getting started. Eight or ten was their idea of moderation. X tried to keep up once, only once. He thought all his open yet illicit drinks on the Gotham City and Paris party circuits had prepared him. He realized he was wrong as he slid to the floor following his seventh vodka in two hours and heard the laughs of his fellow dancers as they reached to pick him up.

He never did that again. He wasn't really a drinker anyway. Why would he want to blur his sensations of his wonderful life? Besides, he didn't want to be hung over. For one, he had to work hard on all the posture and body angle crap they were so obsessed about. Also, he was in the process of building up his upper body a bit. One of the other guys in the Bolshoi told him that, because skinny Nureyev and tiny little Baryshnikov had defected, while muscular Vasiliev had stayed in Russia and remained their biggest star, russians looked on muscular guys as the true dancers. So, almost as a way of trying to show that Vasiliev was better than traitors Nuryev and Baryshnickov, the choreography of russian ballets tended to emphasize the upper body strength in the guys. The russians had altered the choreography of some ballets to include a lot of difficult lifting of ballerinas.

He could tell from their skeptical looks that some of the staff at the Bolshoi didn't think the skinny, six foot tall, 164 pound american with the 27 inch waist would be strong enough but he amazed them with how well he could lift the ballerinas, and how easy he made it seem.

It took a few months, but eventually the fantastically leaping, improbably strong american won over the russian audiences, too. It wasn't only how Xing Fu Lee danced ballet, it was also the joy he seemed to take in it. X's extreme confidence showed through. After a series of leaps and spins, he might stand there chest heaving with the effort but X's natural inclination was to smile at how incredibly well he'd danced. The russian audiences liked it. They didn't seem to go in much for emo or conspicuously sensitive boys. They wanted strength and confidence and X had them.

And after he started to become an audience favorite, the billionaire oligarchs who were patrons and supporters of the Bolshoi practically fought to meet him and have him over for dinner at their huge estate homes. There were Voroshilov, Yagoda, Kuznetsov, Ulrikh, Kobulov, Meshik and Yezhov, all the . . suspiciously wealthy oligarchs who put a little shine on their reputations by supporting the ballet.

They mostly had hot babe wives, all of whom fawned over him and practically groped his buns the moment he came through their front doors. Many meaningful glances, more like stares right at him, were cast by these women. When they saw the extremely handsome young american dancer up close, their eyes would go back and forth in frantic calculation as they looked down or to one side. X could just tell they were wondering how to find an opening to sleep with this apollo instead of the troll at the other end of the dinner table who provided their money. He did manage to fuck Meshik's wife in his dressing room after one performance. But she wasn't that great. And she was a little over the top in being what might be called a leg girl. The whole time, she squeezed his butt and murmured what he had quickly found out was the russian phrase meaning 'great ass'. Oh well, sighed X afterward. They can't all be great fucks.

But, it was true. Their oligarch husbands were all disgusting trolls. Xing Fu Lee didn't want to get too far into the idea that beauty equals moral health, even if he was the best looking ballet dancer there was. It was too junior high school. Good looking equals good. But there was just something about all these guys, a scent, a vibe they gave off, like the corruption of their lives had so permeated them it had even corrupted their appearance. They were disgusting. Slimy. Rubbery jowled with pockmarked skin and ugly tiny eyes, vaguely, well, evil.

Xing Fu Lee might have been a master thief, but he didn't think of himself as evil. He was also an artist! He added beauty to society. He made so many women and, okay, gay men, so happy, just to see him.

On some other nights, he was another sort of bon vivant, redistributing excess lucre from other pockets or more likely safes to his own. But he wasn't like these guys. There was a certain style and even a vague sense of fairness about what he did. These super rich people he encountered and cased out as Xing Fu Lee, ballet star, knew that there were thieves who wanted to rob them. And they tried to stop them. They just couldn't stop him. But everyone knew what the game was.

These russian billionaires were different. They had stolen from everybody, including the poorest russians, like a guy ripping the dollar out of the hands of a bum begging on the street corner. None of them had any money just ten or 15 years before. All of a sudden, as the old soviet state was falling apart, these scheming guys who were supposed to be running factories or warehouses full of machinery or tools or drilling equipment for the soviet state had somehow made off with said machinery or tools or drilling equipment, called it their own and started companies working with russian oil, gas and mining industries. All of a sudden, these guys were nearly running these industries and all these things that were supposed to have belonged to every russian belonged to these guys.

They seemed to give off the stench of corruption to X. He didn't like shaking hands with them. But he did. He played his part and took in everything he saw. But the first couple billionaires he met didn't seem to have anything in their mansions. At least that was X's guess. Their homes, themselves, were colossal, but they both screamed 'secret Swiss bank accounts' to him, with little flashy jewelry on their wives, no good art on the walls and nothing that seemed consistent with a safe full of money or diamonds. No, the first couple seemed almost excessively careful to him.

Kobulov was the opposite. His wife was fairly dripping with diamonds. She'd hugged him upon his entering their home running her hands up and down him as though intending to make a nude sculpture later on, not that X cared. He barely noticed. He was counting all the big, gumdrop sized diamonds of her necklace pressed against his chest. And he couldn't take his eyes off a beautiful painting just inside the door, a landscape by Repin. And Kobulov, himself thrust a handful of bills into the shirt pocket of some guys making a delivery just as X was arriving, only a fraction of the bills inside Kobulov's thick wallet. He had a lot of currency on hand. That said one thing to X.

Safe.

And sure enough, there was one. X introduced knockout gas into the ventilation system and temporarily incapacitated Kobulov, his wife, children and 2 security guards a week later and casually robbed the place.

All the evidence was gone just hours later. It was X's opinion that sending things to Paris was practically ignored by the russian police while sending things to the U.S. attracted attention. So, he sent a fedex to his very close friend Jeremy, the model, in Paris the next day. Jeremy had been instructed to send everything along to old man Guttman. And soon enough X got a postcard from an anonymous source in Jump City telling him two things, first that it was 50 degrees there. X grumbled looking outside at frigid Moscow. And also that Jump City's baseball team was going to sign a guy for $3.7 million. X smiled at their code. He loved these postcard updates that Jump City's basebal team was spending a lot of money. The actual team hadn't signed anyone. X knew what the number really meant.

Following that score, he was approached after a Bolshoi performance by Carreker and Keller, the National Security Administration or NSA operatives he'd met in Paris. They had an autograph book for X to sign. He personalized his signature to his "favorite gay couple" causing angry grunts from Keller while Carreker complained about X not telling them he was going after Kobulov.

"I don't know what you're talking about Mr. Carreker," X smiled.

It was the same thing after X took down Ulrikh's palatial estate outside the city limits. The next day, he'd just finished dancing the lead role in the ballet Spartacus, an extremely athletically demanding one and there were Carreker and Keller, backstage again. "Amazing. You were amazing," said Carreker in russian as someone passed by. And then he started threatening X. What about our deal? He was supposed to help them. How could he knock over Ulrikh's place without telling them, first?

X wondered aloud whether thieves typically did that sort of thing in advance, informed cops or pseudo cops like the NSA, of what they were going to do.

"Fine. Just . . if you get Yezhov, look for any documents of his relating to Gazprom, the giant russian energy company."

X smirked. "I know who they are."

"Just do it!" grunted Keller under his breath.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said X gesturing to his white tights. "I'm just a ballet dancer." and he laughed at the way uptight Keller looked at him standing there casually, still in costume.

Yezhov seemed even slimier than the other billionaires, a short bald man with a large nose and dark deep set eyes above a mouth that seemed permanently curved into a sick sort of smile. And his mansion, outside the city was guarded by a small army. This only intrigued X more. It just made it that much more likely that all Yezhov's money wasn't in vaults in Zurich and Geneva. Also, unlike most such rich men, Yezhov didn't show X and the others around and got upset when X even wandered innocently toward parts of the house. This guy sent up a lot of red flags.

X made his way out there three nights in a row to case the place out. First of all, the property was protected by a green, 20 foot high fence topped by tv cameras. Even to approach the compound, covering perhaps 40 acres inside the fence line, was extremely difficult. X started out watching things from a hillside more than a mile away but even there, security patrols went by twice in four hours and nearly stepped on camouflaged X peering through a telescope from the brush. In addition to the fence and cameras, and perhaps 20 security guards at any one time, there were little metal projections studded across the grounds within the fence that X felt sure must be motion detectors wired to alarms.

X was starting to wonder if he should just leave it. Old Guttman had told him how taking a particular score as a personal challenge was a huge mistake. Take what yuo can and leave what you can't. Period. But X wanted to be sure before passing up this one. He ran this puzzle through his head and went back one more time to see the place. And this time, the outlines of a plan occurred to him.

A week later he got what he needed and put it into action. It snowed heavily. X had an all white outfit, under Armor under North Face outerwear that he got just for this occasion. When the security guards changed shifts, they seemed to briefly turn off the motion detector alarms. And watching the guards, X thought there was a visual gap, a sort of blind spot that they left on one side of the mansion, if only for a minute's time. X made his way to the fence, the last 30 feet taking an excruciating 30 minutes in a snow storm so that he didn't attract the notice of anyone watching camera footage. As the shift change started, X cut through the 20 foot high fence, still 500 yards from the mansion itself, and started sprinting, as quietly as he could, something a ballet dancer trained to precisely controlling his steps could do, all the way to the side wall of the mansion. Once there and done quietly gasping for breath, X climbed the corner between a chimney and the stone building exterior and cut through the glass of a darkened second story window to open the window and let himself in.

Yezhov and his wife were back in Moscow still, their return home delayed by the storm. X only had to avoid a couple servants watching tv. X cut two paintings by the russian master, Levitan, out of their gilt frames just steps away from them while they snorted derisively at some statement by Putin and shouted at the screen that he was a fascist.

X stopped to admire the paintings. He loved Levitan. He'd gained a deep appreciation for the arts with the help of some of the rich people he'd met in Gotham City. They saw what an intelligent, handsome and fantastically athletic young man he was and thought that he should also appreciate the finer things in life. X agreed and thanked them. And he continued his education in the arts in Paris while dancing with the ballet there. Along with the satisfaction of these works of art was the need for X to know which paintings were worth carrying off with him.

After gazing at the Levitans, X continued on through the den and master bedroom cleaning out a safe full of no ruble notes but hundred dollar bills as well as some very official looking Gazprom correspondence and a jewelry box that would have made the Romanovs blush. Getting out was a little harder. He thought the snow might mess with the motion detecting but somewhere just before he reached the fence an alarm sounded and X dispensed with any notions of sprinting quietly. He squeezed through the gap he'd cut in the fence and ran as hard as he could through a stretch of woods where the security guards couldn't follow in their jeeps. He kept sprinting over a hill and then down to a rail line where a freight train was whooshing by right on time. X sprinted and then leaped onto the connection between two cars in the long line of them and watched through the snow as headlights approached the train well back of him from the general direction of the Yezhov estate. But they were too late.

And they never saw him. He was just a slender, athletic body hidden under loose white winter gear and wearing a white ski mask and goggles captured on sketchy security video. They had no idea who had robbed Yezhov. Part of the problem was that russia was a thief state. Anyone might be robbed by just about anyone else. X figured that Yezhov must have suspected the other oligarchs, the mafiya, henchmen acting on orders from Putin, various notorious russian master thieves and, hell, just about anyone between Poland and the pacific before the teenage american pretty boy leaping around the stage in tights at the Bolshoi.

Section chief Carreker and agent Keller knew better. When they finally showed up again, it was just after X had come off stage dancing the role of Apollo, in white tights and bare chested. Keller shook his head in disgust, as usual, radiating a sense of being offended at how X was dressed and that X was not bothered by it.

"What is it with you, Keller? Because, frankly, the guys who get all upset at the sight of me or one of the other guys in tights seem to be the ones who, contrary to all the bluster on the surface secretly desire us."

"Fuck you, ballet boy."

"See that, Carreker? Now he's up to double entendres. Fuck . . me? No matter how much he tries to disguise them, his deepest desires surface. Next thing you know, you'll have to tear him away from me," smirked X.

Keller lunged at X with a punch. "See!" laughed X stepping back as Carreker restrained and calmed his hotheaded partner.

"Come on! Come on!" barked Carreker pushing Keller to the side of X's dressing room opposite X. X did a slow spin on one foot to display himself to Keller and laughed.

"If we didn't need you, pretty boy . . " Keller threatened across the room.

"Need . . ? Even more than . . want, Keller? And 'pretty boy', huh? What a give away!" chuckled X.

"What kind of warped kid comes from a good home like you did and turns into a thief?" barked Keller. "And don't think we don't know about you and that Jeremy, what's his name, that model back in Paris and that other one, Nikolai, a couple weeks ago."

For a split second, X was knocked back. X hated that they were apparently surveilling him. Nikolai? How did they know about that? A red haired model, the other guy in what was supposed to be MMF set up by that wild cover model, that ditz who'd passed out on her own king sized bed. The dude was really smart and funny and they were already undressed, so, what the hell. How did they find out about that?! X recovered quickly and chuckled. "So, you guys have done some research on me, huh? That's cute. What kind of warped kid? The kind who gets you this," said X going over to a small cabinet and removing several folded sheets of paper wrapped in tissue and hand them to Carreker while taking back the tissues. While Carreker inspected them, mumbling about Gazprom and Putin, X continued. "As far as Jeremy and Nikolai, yup. Absolutely true. I enjoyed it, almost as much as I enjoyed all the ballerinas and the girls from Vogue magazine and the ex Mrs. Ritchie and lots and lots of girls from clubs, too. I admit all of it. So what?" said X and he chuckled at how disappointed Keller looked that he hadn't somehow gotten him with the mention of Jeremy and Nikolai.

Keller grumbled something while Carreker continued inspecting documents.

"It's a new millenium, captain uptight. People don't have to lie to themselves and everyone else about having had a good time. So-"

"This is good stuff," interrupted an enthusiastic Carreker brandishing the documents. "We can really use this. How about Yagoda?"

X shook his head. "I'm going to St. Petersburg in a week, to the Kirov. I'll leave you some tickets at the box office for you and Keller."

X liked St. Petersburg.

And it wasn't just that the weather was warming up and that it was normally a bit warmer than Moscow anyway. The people who ran the Kirov didn't try and make a point of establishing their ballet bonafides by criticizing the new american dancer. They were amazed at his leaping and body control and did everything they could to showcase him. Beyond that, X just got along better with the other dancers at the Kirov. There was no particular reason for it but it made things more pleasant for him. And with one of the ballerinas, not a soloist, one in the corps, he had one of the most incredible nights of sex he'd ever had. This was followed, a few days later by an equally fantastic night in bed with a Vogue cover model from St. Petersburg. Life was good in St. Petersburg.

As before, X met and was invited to the homes of rich patrons of the Kirov but one thing after another thwarted him from taking down a score. One rich guy didn't seem to have anything worth the risk in his mansion. He was another guy that gave off that "secret Swiss bank account' vibe to X. So did a couple others. Another one had some paintings worth the effort to steal but the security was insane with motion detectors inside and outside the guy's mansion, lots of guards smartly deployed, and suspicious wiring that seemed to go to every window, door and wall of the place, perhaps some kind of vibration detection. X decided to pass that one up.

In the end, X settled on his first bank job. He'd gone into the largest bank in the city to open an account for show. Just doing my banking, writing checks like anybody else dancing for the Kirov. I don't have millions in secret Swiss accounts. But X saw that the bank seemed to be working on a relatively outdated sort of alarm. He much prefered to work alone but sent a cryptic, coded postcard to Guttman asking about the best alarm man. A few days later, X received a postcard back from Guttman asking a few questions in their agreed code.

X sent another postcard and the next week an unshaven, disheveled looking man in his early 40's perhaps drunk, tall, blond and slightly balding approached him as he was leaving the Kirov's building at the end of a long rehearsal in the late afternoon. He pushed an autograph book into X's chest and begged for a signature in a simpering russian whine. He turned out to be Litton, the greatest alarm man in the world. At the end of his russian whine he had wrapped X in a bear hug and whispered in his ear in clear english. "Are you being watched?"

X nodded slightly. "Push me away. Guttman sent me. I'll see you tomorrow," he muttered. He ran a hand through X's jet black hair. X shoved him away then ran off while the man jogged after him, shouting and pleading in russian for another autograph. The next day, the same man showed up after class and started harassing X before he'd gotten five feet outside the front door. He played a deranged fan, and grabbed onto Xing Fu Lee, wrapped his arms around his waist and would not let go. A security guy tried to pry this crazy man free of the Kirov's star dancer, but he wouldn't let go and a stationary tug of war ensued. Finally a cop stationed at that busy street corner came by and pulled the man off and dragged him away. He was pleading and crying, begging to be allowed to talk to Xing Fu Lee, all in all a great performance thought X. And the man was brought to the nearest station house and thrown into a cell. X, correctly guessing his part, followed him there and asked to speak to the man, to try to talk some sense into him.

"In america we would love to have as many ballet fans as you have here," X told the cop. "Let me try and talk some sense into him. I don't want a man to be treated too harshly for something like this."

The cop shrugged and led X to the cell door then walked away.

The man in the cell shouted some praises to god that the police would bring the great Xing Fu Lee to see him. X said some things about calming down loud enough to be heard by the guard at the end of the hallway and then leaned in closer to the man.

"Crazed fan. Very good."

"Not too over the top, I hope," the man smiled, accent suddenly all Manchester with no Minsk.

"Oh no. Pitch perfect."

"Thank you," he said offering his hand. "I'm Kerensky to them, but actually Litton. You go by Xing or Xing Fu or-"

"Just X."

"Fine. X. Our mutual friend says you're trustworthy and that you think we have a weak target."

"He says the same of you. And, yes, I do think so."

Litton simply raised one eyebrow. Go on. Explain.

X reeled off all that he had seen and inferred about the alarm system at St. Petersburg's biggest bank. Litton only slowly nodded, clearly calculating.

"You're after the boxes, yes?"

X smiled. "Of course. And if they have dollars or Euros or Swiss francs."

"Might as well put rubles on a roll and wipe your arse with them for all the good they are," said Litton and he and X shared a chuckle. "By the way. I just wanted to say that the whole ballet dancer cover is just smashing. I love it."

"But, it's real."

"Well, of course, that's a particularly strong element in it being so bloody good. I mean, you actually are one. And there's all that goes with it. They'll never think of you, will they?"

X smiled as he shook his head. "Can you deal with that alarm?"

"I have. I've dealt with two of those in the past. I don't imagine this one'll be any bloody different. But tell me your plan."

X explained his plan. It all revolved around the duct that he had seen. He'd asked to see their safe deposit boxes. They were in the giant vault and just to get next to the vault had involved getting past two massive steel doors inches thick. But once there, he noticed an air duct in the ceiling right by the vault door and this particular type of door X thought he could beat. The duct, X told Litton, was a rectangular thing about 20 inches by 6 inches. X said he thought he could shimmy down that duct from the roof where he thought it connected to their ventilation and air conditioning pumps. You turn off those alarms and I can get down that vent and into the vault, X told him. It'll be tough. No doubt there are a couple 90 degree bends, but I'm very flexible.

"Hmm. Lot of variables there," said Litton and a guard approached a cell three down and he pleaded and cried in russian promising not to grab X again. The guard rolled his eyes and went away and Minsk left replaced, again, by Manchester. "But I like it. They're all Putin'ed up, this whole country. They think nobody can rob one of their banks in Moscow or Saint Pete. So they don't care that they've got a weak alarm. Let's lock down the uncertain points. Find where those ducts go and get pictures of the roof from one of the high rises around here. Get more certain about that vault door, too. I'll look into a good cutting tool for the boxes and all the other tools. It's at least worth investigating."

X left and put in a good word with the guards for this crazy fan, Kerensky. The next day, X just happened to bump into a super hot girl who lived in the high rise apartment building next to the bank and had a window looking down on it. She was star struck. Xing Fu Lee! He was feeling wildly passionate and fucked her in the middle of the day, quite enjoying this gorgeous brunette's loving and taking pictures of the sun splashed bank building roof with the mini camera he pulled from his coat pocket on the window sill each time he went away to discard a condom. He sent the pictures to an address Litton gave him. He also figured out from a couple more visits to the upper floors of the bank, just where the duct work was within the walls. And he boned up on beating that particular kind of vault door.

The irony was that it was left open, not physically, but not locked. The people running this bank had gotten so lax, so overconfident about their steel doors and their connections to Putin that whoever was responsible hadn't spun the wheel, turned another nob and locked the thing. After X shimmied himself down the duct work, past the three turns and pushed out the grate at the bottom, he was readying to work on the door when he gave it a slight pull and the damn thing swung open. He spoke into his short range radio to Litton up on the roof where he'd disabled the alarm circuitry and had helped X get past the air pump into the duct. "It's already open!"

They had a steady relay for the next four hours. X would fill one of their black nylon satchels, tie it to one of the ropes dangling from the vent over his head and piled up on the floor and tug. Up would go diamonds, saphires, rubies, gold bullion and stacks of dollars, euros and Swiss francs. A few minutes later, X would pull the rope down toward himself till the satchel returned. To get things past the bends in the ducts, he and Litton had 50 feet extra rope on each end. Nothing was just lowered or raised. The line was taut at all times. In between working the rope, X would pick the double keyhole locks on one box after another. The skills he'd learned in his lock picking tutorial from Guttman were much more efficient than the special small saw and other tools Litton had brought.

An hour before sunrise, X made the laborious climb out with Litton pulling on the other end of the rope tied about his waist to help. Getting their six garbage bags full of loot out of there might have presented problems, but Litton had come up with a good solution. He left the roof swung back to the adjacent building from which he and X had started and minutes later came by with the garbage truck he had stolen from the lot of a company with dozens of them. The truck seemed to stall beside the bank and X threw the bags down into the trash hold of the truck and jumped down on top of it before looking around then swinging over to the passenger's door.

They didn't even count their loot. Litton drove the garbage truck to the border of Estonia and then smuggled a car with six incredibly valuable garbage bags in trunk across the border. From there, things were Fedexed to old man Guttman over a period of three weeks. A stack of matryoshka dolls full of diamonds. A stack of books with nothing but covers, nearly all hollowed out and filled with high denomination Swiss francs. One fake after another. Not especially imaginative but they worked.

And X got a postcard with no return adddress stamped from Estonia saying "A good partner not only to ballerinas! Hope to work with you again!". Litton. And a month later another postcard from that anonymous disgruntled sports fan in Jump City informing him that it might take 23 million dollars to sign some outfielder. X smiled. Eleven and a half for him. Eleven and a half for Litton.

The russian papers went nuts about the robbery. Each news outlet pushed a different theory. A foreign gang. Mafiya. Whoever Putin didn't like that day. X just focused on his ballet and enjoyed himself with the St. Petersburg girls.

A week after the robbery, Carreker and Keller showed up again at his dressing room after Le Corsaire. X was removing his makeup.

"It was you, wasn't it?" smirked Carreker.

"What are you talking about?" asked X trying to get just the right degree of innocence to it.

"The bank."

X shrugged. "I don't do banks. Too heavily defended."

"Yeah, right," snorted Keller.

Carreker looked X in the eyes in the mirror, trying to figure if X was telling the truth and X gave him nothing to go on. "Do you guys have some reason for this social visit?"

"Yeah," said Carreker taking a seat as X started to undress. "Our friend with the mansion off Lake Ladoga."

"I told you guys. That one can't be done. Not by me, anyway."

"Well, what about somebody in a glass faced building. Is that the kind of thing you have any idea about?"

X continued undressing and then stepped into the shower. "No good," he said over the spray. "the whole suction cup thing comes off kind of slow and conspicuous. You need to get in some other way than the exterior. Delivery. Maybe a package. No not the kind you're staring at, Keller," laughed X as he continued showering.

"Would you have done a job like that, Lee?" asked Carreker. "Like . . . ," he named the address of the condo penthouse X had robbed in Gotham City.

"Don't know what you're talking about," said X as he soaped himself up. And what surprised him was that Carreker let it drop at that and he and Keller left. He looked out from the shower at his empty dressing room. Hmmph. This was new.

But they kept on showing up after performances and they would sort of perfunctorily ask him about taking down this or that rich russian before asking him questions about a glass tower. It seemed very odd. They were oddly lacking in persistence for a couple of cops. They'd ask him to hit the mansion of this or that rich russian who might have documents their precious NSA wanted. He'd say no and they'd move on to asking him about doing a job in a glass tower. They kept bringing up a hypothetical glass tower job. But they would never say just where it was. All the questions were general, not specific to any one building.

Finally, X's curiosity got the best of him. He followed Keller to his hotel in St. Petersburg late the next afternoon. He approached the front desk and when the clerk looked the other way spun his registry around and flipped a page till he saw the name "Keller". Room 1237. X spun the book back around then smiled and talked with the clerk, who recognized famous, handsome Xing Fu Lee of the Kirov. X moved to an out of the way spot in the lobby and watched Keller go out, perhaps for dinner, a short while later. Then he made his way upstairs, and easily beat the card swipe lock on Keller's room. Once inside, he set up two tiny cameras looking over Keller's laptop computer on his desk.

A day later X was going into the NSA site as Keller, using his password and the number off the NSA security badge he'd stolen from Keller's apartment in Paris. What he found surprised him. He and Carreker and some other contact at the National Security Agency wanted to break into Titans Tower.

X had to read this a second time and then a third time to be sure of what was on his screen.

Uh . . aren't the Teen Titans good guys? Why would a supposedly allied government agency want to break into Titans Tower? There were even pictures of the Tower from different sides at different times of day. There was a picture with a jet seemingly just leaving it and a caption that read "T-Jet entrances and exits completely unpredictable. Flight plans never filed with FAA." Then there was a picture of a giant green pteradactyl flying over the Tower and another notation. "3 Titans with independent flying ability."

But the question that X couldn't get over was why these guys would want to break into Titans Tower. The recent files didn't say. Eventually, he backtracked far enough to come upon some cryptic references to the "Laundry". And soon enough he realized they weren't trying to steal exclusive Teen Titan fabric softener technology. Way back in the chain of communication among the three of them he found emails where the issue was first raised with Carreker and Keller by their boss. And that was where Xing Fu Lee first saw a name with which he became quite familiar.

Red X.


	11. The Story of Red X, Part 5, The Suit

"Red X"

Xing Fu Lee snickered the first time he saw the name on his laptop screen as he combed through agent Keller's NSA files. That was his grandfather's nickname, Red X. But this was a completely different person. This was some super powered type who'd pulled off a couple big heists in Jump City at cutting edge technology companies and then disappeared. So far so good for the NSA, thought X.

The real issue was that these NSA guys thought that it had actually been . . . Robin.

Robin?!?!

X snickered at the absurdity of it, at first.

Robin? Ahahahahaha!!

Robin! The good midget of Gotham City then Jump? The squeaky clean Boy Wonder Bread? X laughed at his keyboard. Robin?! The little siiiiiidekick who used to wear elf shoes and a green speedo? Robin?! Oh, come on!

But as he kept reading, the file, there seemed to be a lot of circumstantial evidence. They had a sketchy voice identification of a statement made in a lab that this Red X was robbing. The quality was poor but they got a 90 percent match to Robin's voice. And biometric analysis of footage was at least consistent with it being Robin. The file showed a picture of this Red X character. X checked it out. Cool suit! All black with gray gloves and a red X on the chest, a short black cape, a full face mask with a hard shell cover over his face that looked almost like one of those masks from the movie "Scream". They had a computer analysis that said the length of this Red X's arms and legs fit Robin to, again, at least a 90 percent match. This was getting interesting.

X read on and found that they had some kind of sighting of this Red X, after the two heists, entering a warehouse later identified as a Slade hideout and then, immediately afterward they had footage, X played the minute and a half piece, of Robin robbing yet another tech place and fighting the other Titans while wearing Slade colors. X's brow furrowed in confusion at all this. What. The. Fuck?!?

But, reading on, X found that some NSA analyst had put it all together. His version of things was that Robin had tried to pretend to be a bad guy by coming up with this Red X suit. Note that no part of Red X's body or skin is ever visible in the suit! But he hadn't fooled Slade at all and Slade somehow blackmailed him into working for him. But, eventually the Titans overcame Slade. And the feeling in the NSA was that Robin was embarassed by his clumsy attempt to trick Slade and didn't want anyone to know what he'd done. So, he had the suit under wraps in Titans Tower.

X wondered about this. Why wouldn't he just destroy the suit? But, he saw in the file that other NSA spooks had made this same objection. The best guess was that it was such an awesome piece of technology that he couldn't bring himself to do it. A seperate, linked file had a rundown on the capabilities of someone wearing the suit.

It seemed to be skin tight but also just short of bullet proof. It had the ability to fire sort of repulsor rays from the gloves and a short duration sort of jet propulsion from the soles of the boots. The wearer seemed to be able to perform feats of short distance teleportation and also to engage a short lived cloaking function that rendered him virtually invisible. All of this was powered by some tubes of crimson gas/plasma called xynothium that fit into the suit's utility belt. They guessed that the belt had some kind of miniaturized device that converted xynothium to energy that was then wired through the entire suit. There was speculation that the mask was fitted with night vision and heat detection capabilitities and then there were the throwing X's. A series of different X shaped devices sort of like Robin's birdarrangs, could be X's filled with explosives, a sort of even stickier crazy glue, X's acting as shurikens, X's which popped open casting a net over an opponent, X's that functioned as saw blades and speculated upon other X's.

Xing Fu Lee was practically getting a hard on thinking of getting to use this suit. And, then, jumping across files, he read that the NSA wanted to get this suit and have one of their agents use it, some Commander named Jack Armstrong. X looked at his picture and immediately hated him. Grinning blond idiot. The all american dullard. What a dumb smile.

And they want me to steal it for them! They want me to pull off a world class theft and then give it this himbo!? Or at least help them figure out how to steal it, X realized. That's what all those questions about glass tower break ins had been.

Well, there was no question of helping them. Because from the moment he read the description of the suit, this magnificent resource just going to waste, Xing Fu Lee was determined that he, and no one else, would be the new Red X.

When the Kirov had a week off in late January, X went home to his family in Jump City. Jump was so far in the past. It was ancient history to X. He was already an international ballet star. He made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, officially and many times that unofficially. He'd traveled effortlessly withe the social elite of three different countries and he'd bedded dozens of ballerinas and models. He had about as much in common with kids in high school as he did with kindergarteners.

But X hugged and kissed his mom and his dad. They wanted to be reassured that Xing Fu was still their baby boy even though they knew he was more grown up then just about any 18 year old in all of Jump City. He helped them think that even if he didn't really feel it.

His sister joked about his reputation as a playboy, asking about this girl and that. Madonna?! Really?! She quoted him things from People magazine, TMZ and the National Enquirer. He hadn't seen any of it and found the mistakes and misconceptions funny. His laughing sister said that they even said he'd-he'd kissed boys. X rolled his eyes. They say that about every guy ballet dancer, he told her. His sister laughed, reassured. She knew it, she gushed. He smiled. He realized that she was in a weird position. How many other girls had friends who'd all downloaded sexy pictures of their brother in tights?

He went out a couple nights making perfunctory appearances at parties and meeting all the kids he hadn't seen in a couple years while he had started living his new life as a ballet dancer. Everyone wanted to make the same jokes to him about the tights and all and ask if he was really making that much money. Had he really humiliated Kobe Bryant like the video seemed to show? Was he really screwing all those ballerinas. X didn't give anybody a direct answer to anything. It took an effort to hold back so much. X was a very proud guy. But He wasn't much interested in homecoming week. His mind was completely elsewhere. He didn't care about discussing old times. These kids were a past he didn't care about. All he could think about was that stupid T shaped tower in the bay.

He invented excuses to be out of the house and keep a watch on the place for almost 20 hours a day the next five days. He had a telescope and a set of binoculars and took notes of everything he saw including the comings and goings of the Titans. He tried to work out even some very rough possible plans but without being able to see the damn building up close, he couldn't be sure what, if any, weak points there were. After all his observation, he didn't have any real plan and he only had two more days before going back to St. Petersburg.

He could always keep going the way things were. It was pretty sweet. Dance ballet. Live the high society celebrity life. Screw practically any woman in high society he wanted. And take down big scores. Even after paying Litton his half and Guttman his usual percentage, he still had $10 million from just the St. Petersburg bank job going to his swiss bank account. It was a 99th percentile life. But X couldn't stop thinking about the only thing better.

Xing Fu Lee was not the type to be afraid to take a risk, especially when great rewards were possible. He would never have gotten this far if he was. He went over things again and again. He only had a few things to use. When the little green goof flew out as a pteradactyl at the same time as the jet left, they were never going far away and were often back quickly. The same was true if Raven or Starfire could be seen flying out the top of the stupid building at the same time as the jet departed. When they all went away in the jet, that's when they were gone longest. But it was nearly impossible to tell which of them were in the jet when it took off. Some might remain behind. He didn't know how he would try and enter the place but he knew that he had a hell of a lot better chance if a bunch of super powered doofuses weren't all sitting around inside.

He was pondering this in the late afternoon when, all of a sudden, lights started to blaze atop the tower the way they always did just before there was a sound of whooshing jet engines. Then the T-Jet rose off the roof and went tearing off to the west. X watched carefully from a pier and didn't see any green flying creature of any sort or either of the two flying girls. Even better, they had headed west. The closest anything to the west was, what, Hawaii? They weren't going west for a short trip.

It was now or never and X was a carpe diem sort of boy. He sprinted down the pier and jumped into the speedboat tied there. He'd eyed it for days and reminded himself how to start one of those without the keys. He threw off the line tying it to the pier and easily hot wired it then gave it full throttle, heading out into the bay but with the lights off. He heard a faint shout when he was already a hundred yards out but wasn't about to stop. He slowed the throttle to a virtual stop as he neared the island and let the boat's momentum carry him in. He found a small sandy beach almost hidden on one side of the island and deftly grounded the speedboat there. He gathered his special bag of tools then stepped onto the fiberglass bow of the boat before jumping onto the sand. He found a nice set of stone steps up to the big glass T of a building and stopped there eyeing it. You didn't realize how big the stupid thing was looking at it from Jump City. It was 14 stories high and the base must have had a square foot print seventy five feet on each side. He walked around the base of it, quickly, noting everything, the absence of vents, the one door, what the glass panes looked like, how thick they seemed to be, how they seemed to be joined, everything. Nothing jumped out. He circled the damn thing again. Again, nothing jumped out, no obvious weak point.

X felt angrily impatient but reminded himself that a minute's thought was worth a hell of a lot more than a minute's more action. He circled it again, jogging along the neatly cut grass and staring intently at the glass facade structure alternately in sun, shade or a combination depending on which of the four faces he was passing. Still nothing. Damn it! There was only the one door and that had a full palm pad, retinal scanner and what looked like a voice identification unit. And even then there was a key swipe pad that looked very different from anything he'd beaten when he stared at it up close. Fuck that. There had to be a better way to go than that. But the whole building was glass panels an inch thick or more. Probably just about impossible to shatter or cut through. Fuck!

After the bottom floor, where they were clear, they were opaque, blue. But that's all that seemed to make up the exterior of the damn tower. Glass panels. Most buildings had windows and wall irregularities in masonry or concrete. They had ledges. They had vents. They had neighboring buildings. They gave you something to use. Something! This stupid "T" shaped thing gave you nothing. Fuck!

X stopped circling it and sighed. I probably wouldn't fit into the suit anyway, he told himself. That midget Robin wore it. Why would it fit a good looking athlete?

X sighed out loud. "Okay. Reset. Stop thinking of consolations for failing." X reproached himself for partially giving up and walked around the building one more time. Then He crouched down and stared at the joint between two of the glass panels. He could see tiny metal filaments. Wires. Could be for all sorts of things, activating chemical additives within the panels to filter out UV light. And, of course, alarms. X checked at the edge of another one. Same thing. Damn. Gotta be alarm wiring. Try and move or cut one of these glass panels and you break a circuit. Shutdown. Lock down. Sirens'd probably go off that you could hear on the other side of Jump City. The whole building was a circuit. Damn it!

X stepped back as far as he could on the pacific side of the island, just wanting to see the building from a different angle and that's when he saw it, a variation in the facade of blue panels. He pulled out his binoculars from the backpack over his shoulders and focused.

Yes.

There was a window open, not even all the way but up on the . . 13th floor, one down from the top, there was a window open a foot or so to the side. The panels were smaller up there, not 4 feet wide by 8 feet high like the rest of the stupid thing. They were about a quarter that size. And they were oriented with the long side running horizontally, not vertically like the panels on the rest of it. One of the small panels up there, it was a window. And it was open about a foot. It looked like the windows up there on the top two floors, the only ones that seemed to have them, opened sideways not up and down. This one had been pulled a foot to the right as he looked at it. X sighed considering the challenge. He hadn't even brought the suction cup set he had with which he might have gone up the glass. But the glass seemed to be wired for an alarm system. It might go off just from his 165 pounds being added to the weight of any glass panel.

And then . . it occurred to him that maybe you didn't have to go up the glass to climb this building. He pulled two long utilty knives from his back pack. He jabbed one into the inch and a half wide hard rubber seam between two panels. Probably just something on the facade, he thought. There was probably metal just a few inches in. The hard rubber or plastic in the seams between the glass panels was just to keep the sun and salt water off the metal that really mattered. X tugged downward on the knife he'd jammed into the rubber seam. There was no give. He pulled down harder. It still didn't give. X smiled. Now he thought he could do it. His glance shot up to the next to the top floor where the window was open a foot. Thirteenth floor. All he had to do was make an impossible climb a hundred feet or so straight up the side of a building by jabbing long knives into it and pulling himself up. That's all. If it had even seemed possible, the anal retentive mideget, the little bat would've protected against it, right?

It took him 20 minutes and he almost fell to his death several times. It was incredibly difficult. Each time he stabbed higher with the knife in one hand he had to support all his 165 pounds with the knife grip of his other hand. He couldn't do anything with his legs for fear that pressure against a glass panel would set off an alarm.

He was glad for all the upper body work he'd done for dancing with the Bolshoi and Kirov. His shoulders, both hands and both wrists ached by the time he got up to the 13th floor. But he made it. He'd be dead meat if those doofuses and their stupid jet came back now. He figured he'd be in trouble if anyone else saw him, too. But he was climbing the building on the side facing the Pacific and only a single yacht way out on the horizon was visible. The wind whipped around and pushed against the building and pushed his body from side to side up that high. A fall would mean instant death. But he kept going, clawing not higher but to one side now. The open window was thirty feet to the side of the main vertical core of the tower. At last, it was just a few feet up from him. The wind seem to whistle louder with that aperture to divert some of it. It was cold up there. Not Moscow cold but still too cold.

X swung his body to the right like a pendulum then tried to surge back to the left toward the open window. Not far enough, he only got his left foot to a point still a foot below the window. He swung his legs back over to the right then, straining every muscle in his torso and arms, surged upward to his left and got one foot inside. Aaarrrggghhh! He screamed with the effort needed and got the other one in, too. Now his hands were below his feet and did a sort of handstand on the two knife handles, pushing up with everything he had and working to get more and more of his legs and then waist inside. With one last push he let go of both knife handles and wiggled his body inside the window till he got one hand inside, too. At last he gave a tug on the window frame and went tumbling inside, the loss of light leaving him almost blind with his entrance into the darkened room as he fell beside a bed gasping for breath.

X felt partial triumph and great relief as he looked around now from where he sat on the floor leaning against the side of someone's bed in someone's warm room.

"What a fucking mess!" he chuckled to himself.

The bed was unmade with a black and pink, or maybe it was purple bed spread mostly on the floor. There were pieces of sandwiches and crackers with tofu on them on the nightstand and here and there on the floor. The place had a bit of a smell. Maybe why the window was open. There were clothes, magazines and video games all over the place. Comic books, too. He picked one up off the floor. The Ultimates volume 3 number 2. Ehh. Not bad. And, looking around some more he saw underwear and a PETA t-shirt among the debris. The walls had a lot of posters that looked like they came from National Geographic wildlife special issues. There was a night light plugged in to one side of the bed. And sticking out from between the mattress and box spring was the edge of a sheaf of papers. X pulled them out. There were a few porn photos apparently downloaded from a site called "T&A-arama!", a few copies of lascivious letters from fangirls and a few dozen pictures of Raven.

"O . . kay!" said X putting them back and rising to his feet. No doubt whose room this is. He went to the equally messy bathroom and took a piss, flushing when done but trying not to touch anything.

Now he had to find the Red X suit and he had to do it fast. He didn't know how much time he had. He went out the black room door into the hall which was all black marble floors and navy blue walls with stainless steel accents. He made a circuit of that floor of the building. The hallway made a sort of square ended oval with an exta wide doored elevator in the middle that was accessible from the middle of either long side of the oval. He remembered that the glass panels only seemed different on this floor. He guessed that this meant Titans' rooms were only on this floor. One of these rooms was Robin's. Which one? He examined the floor in front of each door closely. Robin wore steel toed shoes. X went down the hall pressing his eyes nearly to the marble to examine the tiles in front of each door. Two had some scuffing. Of course, one would be Cyborg's. His shoes would scratch the floor, too. But one was on the short side of the building facing north. The other was on the long side facing east. He guessed that the midget wonder would be the sort of sick puppy who got up early and would welcome the sun shining into the room in the morning.

None of the doors had knobs or visible locks. They had handles. X tried the handle on what he hoped was Robin's door. It didn't move a millimeter. Completely solid. Damn. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a micro recorder. He had taped the sound of a press conference, Robin speaking and introducing the other Titans and finishing by adding, "and me. Robin.". X played the last word. Next to the door and pushed the handle downward. The door opened. Sweet!

X took a deep breath and stepped inside. As messy as Beast Boy's room had been, that's how neat Robin's was, obsessively so. It screamed it. It was spartan, too. There was a bed, a night stand, a couple chairs against one wall, a poster of a leaping Bruce Lee on another wall, a low bookcase full of books and a small table with pieces of a birdarang that had been taken apart. There was also a small desk with a computer and what looked like a Titans communicator being repaired. X took the communicator and shoved it into his backpack. He opened one door against a side wall. It was the bathroom. Spotless. He opened the other door. It was a closet. He brushed aside some shirts and pants. Down on the floor at one end of the closet was a rectangular box three feet long, two feet wide and six inches thick.

X, calm even while risking his life climbing the side of Titan's Tower, now felt a surge of enthusiasm. He felt sure, somehow, so sure that he wasn't surprised, didn't gasp when he pulled the box out and opened it on the bed revealing the sought after Red X uniform inside.

X had intended to carry it out in his backpack but found himself, without thinking about it, stripping. He got down to his dance belt then pulled on the pants of the uniform. They were much tighter than he'd have liked on his butt and squeezed his equipment but the material was thin, flexible and tough. When he tried pressing the blade of one of his knives against it, he got nowhere. And, curiously, after a few seconds, the pants almost seemed to adjust to his body and the fit became better. He pulled on the boots. They were flexible too even though he could feel the jet force openings at the middle of the sole. But they were way too small. At first. They must've been size 6 or 7 at most. Ouch. This was a deal breaker. But then, just like the pants, they adjusted to him and felt like the ten and a halfs he normally wore.

X pulled on the top with the attached cape. The fit was tight in the shoulders but not that bad except that the sleeves were short. At first. He tugged on the sleeves a little bit and they seemed to stretch a bit, just as desired. At the waist, the top overlapped the pants with the two almost feeling glued together, sealed as if a bead of crazy glue had been applied between them. Nice. Then he pulled on the gloves. Same thing, small at first then perfect. He reached over and picked up birdarang pieces off Robin's table. The fingers of the gloves were super thin and didn't seem to reduce his dexterity at all. Next was the cowl, almost like a balaclava, X pulled it over his head. It covered all but the center of his face and like the other material overlaps, formed a tight bond, somehow, to the uniform top below it.

All that left was the mask. X carefully lifted it and slowly pressed it to the cowl. Like the other overlaps, it instantly formed a tight bond.

X could not resist.

He breathed slowly in and out as deeply as possible, imitating that trademark sound.

hoooooooooooooooooooo

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

hoooooooooooooooooooo

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

"Emperor . . what has become of Padme . . and the children? . . . . . Noooooo!!"

He grinned underneath the mask but quickly returned to serious matters. What could he do in this suit?

First he did a split. No problem. The suit didn't restrict him at all. He did some other ballet moves. The suit felt great. It moved with him perfectly. It did feel a little odd to have a cape but when he reached for it, he found that a couple of those red X's ready to throw were tucked into sort of velcro closed pockets in the bottom of the cape.

"So, that's where those are."

He took one out and inspected it. It was surprisingly light. For a moment he considered whipping it into the wall and trashing Robin's room just for the hell of it but realized it would be better to make off with the suit without it being known about for a while.

Across the room, he noticed the mirror in the bathroom, strode over there and flipped on the light. he admired both himself and the look of the suit. It was cool. He was so cool. Soooooooooo cool. It all seemed so natural, him and this suit, like it was meant to happen. But, a thought occurred to him. He didn't know how to get the damn thing off. He tugged at the mask, then at the cowl, the gloves, the boots, the top, the pants. He couldn't budge any of it. Every place the pieces of the suit overlapped it was like a tube of crazy glue had been squirted out and bonded the pieces.

He went back to the box and found 80 stapled pages with the title "RED X SUIT GUIDE" on the cover. X skimmed through parts and read parts. Some of it he understood right away. Other parts like the description of the material, an "elastomeric textile armor" were a bit much with time so short.

It turned out the whole thing could be controlled a couple ways. There were what the guide called "mode choice sensors" in both gloves. X pressed the palm of either glove in a certain spot three times quickly and all the unbreakable connections of the pieces of the suit let go. There was a diagram to help explain it. It turned out there were metal filaments running all through the suit and there were bands where the different pieces overlapped. The super thin metal band in the top, at the waist, for instance was polarized one way and the band in the pants, at the waist, were polarized the opposite way so that there was an intense magnetic attraction. When he pressed the palm of either glove three times at a certain spot, an undetectable charge of electricity shot through and reversed some of the polarities letting the suit pull apart. X flipped ahead in the book and saw the phrase "Cloaking Function" at the top of one page. He skipped the long explanation of "photon redirecting nanoscale level metamaterials" and went straight to the instructions on how to activate this function. He went back to Robin's bathroom and tried the mode control switch in the mask. He whispered "mode activate" and then "cloaking" as he imagined he might when robbing some billionaire's mansion or bank and didn't want nearby guards to hear him. He looked in the mirror.

He wasn't there.

"Holy shit!"

He wasn't there!

The mirror showed the tiled wall and the door frame behind him but there was no sight of the star ballet dancer and master thief in the form fitting black suit. X moved back and forth. Didn't matter. He wasn't there.

"This is fucking awesome!" he shouted. "Look out motherfuckers! Cuz now I've got the tools to match the talent and nobody can stop me!"

Red X turned out the light and put everything in Robin's room back exactly the way he'd found it, including the box in which he Red X suit had been stored. Well, not everything. Red X removed a tube of powder he'd brought with him. Concentrated essence of the heat rub, Atomic Balm. He opened Robin's dresser drawer and spread the powder inside the crotch of every jock, brief or swimsuit in there. It was harmless until the wearer sweated to the slightest degree. This then activated the powder and it would become fiery hot and extremely difficult to remove. Red X smiled as he closed the dresser drawer.

He left Robin's room and returned to Beast Boy's, which he had left open with a video game blocking the door from closing. Next he read over the section of the suit guide that covered the use of the jets in the boots. He then closed Beast Boy's door and put the backpack he'd brought with him safely into one of the compartments at the inside bottom of the cape. He climbed out the window and stood on the handles of the two knife blades he'd used to climb the side of the building.

"Here goes," he muttered to himself and then said, "Mode Activate . . boot jets," uttering the last two words just as he hopped off the knife blades. At first, the jets weren't strong enough and he fell but he used the power controls in his gloves and stopped his descent down around the 6th floor then steadily rose as he kept throttling more power to his boots and finally reached the 13th floor again where he pulled the two knives out fo the hard rubber panel divider. Then, using his glove controls again, he allowed himself to descend again, and when within 10 feet of the ground switched to voice operated throttle. "Power down . . power down . . " and finally, just before hitting ground, "Power up . . and off" and he stuck the landing with arms raised in triumph.

Red X jogged down to the beach where he'd left the boat, not sure of the power demands of the boots and not wanting to try a flight across the bay just yet. He pushed the speed boat off the sand, hot wired it again, proving that the Red X suit gloves wouldn't crimp his style and drove the boat back toward the pier. It was getting dark now and he wouldn't have been visible very far out from the pier but a hundred yards out, Red X muttered, "Mode Activate . . cloaking" into his mask and watching his gloved hand disappear from view even though it was on the steering wheel right in front of him.

A few people were there on the pier, including the boat's owner and a couple cops. They stared, wide eyed at the boat just magically stopping back at the pier with no one driving it and Red X climbed right up onto the pier beside them. The owner seemed like such a stuck up jerk that invisible Red X made him trip and fall off the pier into the bay then went on his way.

The first priority was to master this thing. In the day he had left at home, Red X did almost nothing but read and re-read the Red X Suit Guide, holding the 80 stapled pages behind one magazine after another. He found out that the suit stretched to fit his vastly superior body because the midget wonder had some idea, probably a fantasy, that he was gonna have a growth spurt and grow to six one. X snickered, yeah, sure, then kept reading. The one time he went out of the house, he changed into the suit and activated cloaking mode in an alley then went through the front door of Guttman's shop. The bell tinkled and the old man came out. But saw no one there, shrugged and started for the back room.

"Aren't you going to help me?" said Red X.

Guttman turned around. It had been Xing Fu Lee's voice but . . where was he?

"I'm right here," Red X said from the other side of the counter.

The old man wiped his eyes. "What-what kind of trick is this? Is that you, X?"

"It sure is, old man. Let's talk in the back room," he said and jumped over the counter. The old man shook his head at the door to the back room opening despite no one being there. Once they were both out of view, Red X turned off the cloaking mode and pulled off the mask and gave the old man a hug. He explained everything he'd been up to including the theft of the suit.

This scared the old man who thought that getting superhero types pissed off at you couldn't be anything but bad for business. But Red X said that it was worth the risk considering how great the suit was. He explained its functions and told the old man that it didn't matter. It was too late to be worried now. He'd stolen it from them. But now, he didn't have to cower on a level below every cape, every Spiff Spandex, below the villains, too and hope that none of them noticed him. He could go against any of them now. And a lot of jobs he had to let go before . . he could do now.

Just don't get too greedy, the old man counseled. And, you still have to plan things out, Xing Fu. Watch out that someone doesn't somehow connect the other you, the prince in white tights, with the times and dates of a bunch of jobs. And you'll have to put some real thought into how you store this new suit ya got on. If those NSA types realize you got it, they'll try everything to get it back. You'd better get yourself some blackmail ammunition that'll keep them from going after you.

He went on and on and as completely cool as X was, he actually felt like this was one of those sentimental sappy moments that idiots seemed to love and that he hated. Only he didn't mind this one. He gave the old man a hug, put the skull mask back on and went invisible to walk out of there.

X took the suit back to St. Petersburg with him. Like always, after a big heist, his interest in new robberies waned for a little while and he put his heart and soul into his dancing. He met some more really hot girls in the St. Petersburg clubs and everything in his life just had a sort of happy glow about it. This whole Red X thing just felt like it was where he was supposed to be. It was his destiny.


	12. Appreciation Day

If it was possible, getting hold of the Red X suit had even increased Xing Fu Lee's self-confidence. The pretty boy ballet dancer and master thief was already quite full of himself. Gaining the Red X suit and becoming a super thief capable of going toe to toe with heroes and villains didn't make him shy or insecure. Quite the opposite.

He had another month of dancing ballet with the Kirov to go and threw himself into it with all he had. For a little while after any heist, the urge to pull off a robbery went away, like a hunger temporarily sated. In such times, he could be insanely committed to other things. The russian audiences swooned at the incredible dancing of the american guest soloist with his amazing leaps, fantastic flexibility and great acting ability, able to portray characters good or bad with total commitment.

And while he was finishing his stint with the Kirov, to critical acclaim and audience adoration, section chief Carreker and agent Keller dropped by his dressing room some more, still occasionally asking questions about doing a job in a glass tower and also trying to get him to break into the homes of certain russian oligarchs. As before, X passed. Those places were too well defended he told them again. Keller still gave him the evil eye and X still made fun of him. He couldn't resist. Why should the guy be so uptight about seeing him in his tights?

Then after a couple heist free weeks, he started feeling the now usual itch. He had found the perfect hiding place for the suit and he now retrieved it pulled it on and used it to rob the rich russian in the mansion on Lake Ladoga that Carreker had previously mentioned to him. He got away with two handfuls of diamonds, another beautiful Levitan landscape painting and some thick stacks, wrapped in celophane, of 100 dollar bills. He also found a sheaf of documents relating to Lukoil and Rosneft, russian energy companies, that he thought Carreker would find interesting. He made copies using the tiny camera on the Red X mask.

The robbery was all over the russian papers, the majority of which seemed to think that the prime suspect was the Mafiya, that this particular rich guy was someone they had something against. Carreker thought otherwise. Too clean he told X the next time he and Keller approached X, in the usual way, immediately after a performance. One of the ballerinas, one of the few X hadn't fucked yet, was pressed against his side as the two men approached. She'd actually rebuffed him the first time he made a pass at her. But, word of mouth was powerful. Just that morning he'd seen her talking to a ballerina X had slept with and either that other ballerina was gesturing with her hands to show how big a fish she'd caught or word of mouth was, indeed, very powerful. She was very interested now.

"See you at Sergey's party, X?"

X nodded with a wolfish smile and blew her a kiss.

Carreker shoved his autograph book in X's face as the ballerina sauntered off. "Sorry to disappoint you, Keller," said X while he personalized the signature. "But I'll be with her tonight. You'll have to keep dreaming."

Keller only grunted an expletive. X spun a circle on the toes of one foot in front of him as another fan passed by and X waved to him. Carreker herded the three of them into X's private dressing room and X immediatlely went to a small cabinet and got out the document copies. He handed them to Carreker who seemed first surprised and then nodded as though he had completely expected it.

"I figured it was you, X. Didn't I, Keller?"

Keller grunted agreement.

"I said 'Our pretty boy X is the only one who could do that job'. Mafiya? A job that clean? Bullshit. But you said it was no go, didn't you, X? You said it was too tough. What happened?"

"I guess I'm getting better," said X.

"Better? That place looked tougher to get into than Fort fucking Knox. How'd you do it?"

X just smiled and started undressing.

Carreker and Keller kept asking him to explain but he wouldn't. They pressed him some more for details but he wasn't obliging. They went off pleased for his help but clearly annoyed that they didn't know how he'd done it. X thought about it, even in bed right after screwing that ballerina that night, looking over the top of her hair bun where her head lay on his chest.

They wouldn't let the issue drop. It was tempting to keep playing with them, especially to tweak Keller for secretly desiring him. But they're gonna figure it out, he decided. Eventually they're gonna figure it out. Somebody'll get a security camera shot of Red X or a heat detection shot of Red X. And they'll find out. They'll match Red X jobs to where I was. Old man Guttman was right. They're gonna know. Gotta take steps now. Gotta make a couple moves on the chess board before they do something.

And, so he did. X got up early, only screwed that ballerina once in the morning and made contact with a top defense lawyer in each of a half dozen different cities, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Paris, London, Gotham City, Jump City, Chicago. Not just any lawyers but the nastiest badass advocate in each city. He set himself up as a client of each with a generous initial retainer that easily overcame their objections to him saying that there wasn't anything he wanted them to do. Then he started making copies of discs of all the NSA files he could. And he got Carreker and Keller into conversations in his dressing room, recorded conversations, in which they talked about the things they'd asked X to do, the people they'd wanted him to rob. X sent a copy of everything to each of the lawyers.

Then he robbed Putin's place in St. Petersburg. It was only one of several homes the scumbag had. There were probably army bases with fewer uniformed flunkeys marching around. It was thought to be an absolutely untouchable place. Of course, this designation didn't consider a thief who could leap as high and far as Red X and do it while being invisible to any onlooking guards. The only disappointment was that Putin had such terrible taste in art. The stuff X took had probably been strong armed away from the previous owners and it was all shit. The guy really _was_ a despot without a soul, wasn't he? X arranged for all of the money stolen from Putin's St. Petersburg place to be shot up into the air and come wafting down on shoppers in the middle of the city. A gift from your glorious dictator. The reason was that he suspected it had all been marked, the serial numbers noted. There were faint markings next to most fo the serial numbers. This would be helpful in locating the thief if they started turning up in one location or following one person's movements. X gave them to every shopper in St. Petersburg. There was nothing Putin or his flunkeys could do. Was he going to arrest everyone in St. Petersburg? Well, okay. He might. He probably considered it. But he didn't.

Carreker and Keller were really tweaking now. They visited after his next to last performance with the Kirov. He was still sweaty in his gold velvet top and white tights. He brushed aside their questions. Putin?! Me? Ahahahaha! But they weren't buying it. He didn't care. He had what he needed to keep them off of him. It was just a matter of time before they realized what had happened. But he was ready now.

Maybe it was his years as a ballet dancer always making carefully choreographed movements. But the idea of waiting for Carreker, Keller and the National Security Agency to suddenly come after him in whatever chaotic fashion seemed dumb. Why not set things up to go the way I want, to happen on my terms?

That night, he pulled on the Red X suit and broke into Keller's hotel room. He knew that Keller was up at 6:30 on the dot every morning from the surveillance cameras he'd placed there. At 6 o'clock, he turned on Keller's laptop, logged in to the NSA site as he'd done as Keller dozens of times already, and sent a request to be removed from the case to Carreker and his boss. It was written as the rambling confession of a man unhinged by the realization of his true sexuality. "I can't serve my country on a case involving this gorgeous ballet dancer with his incredible face, warm carmel brown eyes luscious body and especially his sweet, sweet ass" confessed faux Keller. He asked to be given other duties. X smirked at Keller down the hall in the bedroom, still sleeping, then logged off and shut off the laptop.

He couldn't wait for the scene this would make but it took a day. He was just down the street from the Kirov's building the day after that when a gritted teeth Keller in an overcoat stomped angrily at him where X sat beside a beautiful blond Finnish girl in a sidewalk cafe. He looked frantic, unhinged, like he might pull out a gun and shoot X at any moment. X remained calm.

"Katariina, this is Mr. Keller. He's a huge ballet fan. Keller. This is Katariina."

"Oh. One of those men who loves to watch an 18 year old boy in white tights?" muttered Katariina in her delicious little accent.

X nodded and Keller looked as though he might grit his teeth hard enough to snap his own jaw bone.

She waved at him and gave her usual chirpy little 'hi!'. X smiled. She was so cute, in her beautiful, perky girl way. The model agencies had picked a winner with her. And if the modeling thing ever fell through, X felt certain she could do porn, at least based on her performance the night before. Even now all bundled up in an overcoat, she seemed to hint at what a great fuck she was. Something about the utterly open way she looked at you.

Keller only grunted a 'hi' back at her.

"What's up, Mr. Keller? I got those roses you sent me-"

"Roses?" sniffed Katariina before muttering "I think I have competition."

"Let's talk, X! In private!" snapped Keller and he led X down the street past another sidewalk cafe to an alley. X followed, smirking all the way.

"I know you fucking did it, you pretty boy asshole!"

"Did what, agent Keller?" smiled X as over the top innocent as possible.

"You fucking bastard! I spent all yesterday and all morning today explaining that I haven't fallen for you and your sweet . .-"

X burst out laughing and Keller lunged at him. X jumped and sidestepped him and gave Keller a hard elbow as he went by opening a cut over his eye. But this wasn't enough and Keller charged him again. This time, X stepped forward and gave Keller two short punches, one uppercut to the jaw and then a hook to the side of his face. Keller crumpled to the dirty alley, groaning. He was still conscious but no threat. X sighed at the bother and dragged him over and sat him upright against one building.

"You took it, didn't you X?" demanded Keller, wiping blood off his face.

X gave him more over the top innocence.

"You found out about the laundry, didn't you? And you stole it? Didn't you? You did the place on Lake Ladoga. You did Putin's. And you used the laundry to do it."

"Keller. I'm going to go back to Katriina. Are you guys tossing my place even as we speak?"

"Haha. How do you like your place bein' broken into, pretty boy? Huh? And if they find it, I bet they set you up to take the fall for the Putin thing."

"Woooooo, I'm really scared Keller," chuckled X, waving his hands. And as he walked away, he reveled in the guy's sort of befuddled look, as if he was wondering, what the hell did we get ourselves into with this kid.

Of course they didn't find the Red X suit. X's apartment in St. Petersburg looked like a tornado had gone through it but they didn't find anything. He knew they wouldn't. The next night, Carreker and Keller were there at his dressing room after all the cheers and standing ovations had ended, after Xing Fu Lee had bowed holding the hands of just about every dancer in the company, a salute to his time with them. X was taking a swig from a bottle of champagne bottle when they approached him in the hall.

"Hey guys," said X, casually, first autographing a photo of him and then inviting them in.

"That wasn't very nice what you did to my partner, here," said Carreker.

"Did?" responded X starting to pull off his costume and striking the best note of actual innocence he could manage. "But I didn't do him. Can he . . can he not tell his sexual fantasies from reality any more?"

"Very funny, Lee," continued Carreker. "But the really interesting thing is not what you did but what it means that you did it. You don't care if we know that you've been into our files. Now, why would that be?"

X finished undressing and turned on the shower. "Very . . to the point, Carreker. Also quite logical. I like that, as long as creative flourishes aren't ruled out."

"I think I know why you did it, Lee. You have the laundry and you realize we'll figure it out eventually. So, you didn't worry about letting us know."

"And you're a little wiseass pretty boy, prick!" snorted Keller.

"With a sweeeet ass," pointed out X as he stepped under the spray of the shower. "Not that, um, my prick is little. As you can both see, I've probably got better equipment than either of you, right?"

After a silence of a few seconds, X burst out laughing and continued soaping himself up.

"You think you've got something, don't you?" said Carreker. "Something on us."

X continued leisurely soaping up. "Well," he said over the spray and then casually soaped up some more for a minute before slowly rinsing off. "Yeah," he finally added then rinsed some more, making them go by whatever pace he chose. Finally, he turned off the water and swept his collar length black hair out of his face and tied a towel around his waist.

"See guys. I've got alllll these files, all these classified NSA files which is not only bad for the NSA, but bad for you guys in particular. I mean, how will the other guys at spook central feel about you two when the guy you were supposed to be watching, um . . me, dowloads hundreds and hundreds of files, email messages, confidential documents, you name it, and gives copies of it to six different prominent lawyers around the world. I mean, that's gotta make you look pretty bad if it ever comes out, doesn't it?"

"And . . why . . would . . that information ever come out?"said Carreker, speaking cautiously, as though defusing a bomb.

"Well, those files and copies of the recordings I made, don't forget those," suggested X who then paused to remove a micro recorder from a small cabinet and press play. A series of statements played, him identifying the other speaker as Carreker or Keller and then one of them, usually Carreker urging him to rob this or that russian billionaire. "Doesn't sound good for you guys," continued X as Keller grunted out an expletive.

"Why would this stuff come out? Well . . . if anything . . happens to me. If I'm oh . . . arrested. If I'm somehow in an accident. If I die. Or even if my room just gets tossed again. Information gets released. Do you understand?"

Carreker, ever the big picture guy of the two, sighed angrily but then quickly nodded. Keller shook his head in disgust vigorously and pawed at the wallpaper. " . . . can't believe we're in this position . . how hard can it be to control some sex addict in tights? Remember that, Paul?! Remember that?! So, some kid whose job is to show off his ass to rich women's robbed a few of 'em. We'll handle this fruit, no problems, boss. Remember that?! "

"Aww, shut the fuck up, Nolan. We are where we are at this point."

"That's right," said a smiling X drying himself off then tossing the towel aside and pulling on a pair of boxers. "Sorry, Keller. But as a courtesy to Carreker I'm gonna put something on," and turning back to Carreker, he continued. "And where you are right now is . . you're my bitches! You two are . . . my bitches. But, hey, I'm not totally without sympathy. I'll help you guys out . . . here and there . . if I feel like it. Better to have me still, officially, a friendly party than an enemy, right? Because if I get categorized as an enemy then a lot of hard questions might get asked like, where's that Red X suit? And if I get categorized as an enemy, then you guys might feel like you have to move against me. But if you do, all those files and recordings get opened up by 6 of the nastiest lawyers on the planet. So, yeah, we are where we are," continued X and then moving over to stand between Carreker and Keller then slapping an arm down over the shoulders of both of them. "We're gonna remain pals like always, aren't we?"

Keller stepped angrily away from X, still only wearing his boxer shorts. Carreker glanced warily toward X.

"What might here and there mean, Lee?"

"I'm going to dance with the Royal Ballet in London, for six months, Section chief. After that, I think I'm going back to Jump City," said X now leading them both to the dressing room door. "Contact me in London or Jump. But don't expect me to do any jobs blind and don't lie to me. If I like the job I might do it. If you try and set me up, I'll fuck you guys over even harder than Keller dreams of fucking me."

Keller grumbled an expletive as he and Carreker slipped out.

X had a great time in London. It was nice to be absolutely fluent in the language for a change and it was great that the staff at the Royal Ballet didn't make any particular new demands on him. They didn't try to change his style of dancing or demand that he dance a certain way. And he immediately became the top dancer in the company. X would never have said it but he thought the british boys were wimps. At least, their ballet dancers were wimps. It took X about 30 minutes in class of showing his superior, honed technique, of leaping much higher than them, of showing that, despite his slenderness, he was stronger than all of them and could more easily carry their ballerinas for him to establish himself as unmistakably the alpha male of the Royal Ballet.

What also surprised and greatly pleased X was that his fame seemed to have endured long enough that there was a new dynamic to his various conquests. The girls he met in London clubs, at London fashion shows and on the streets now seemed to categorized him as a famous person, a famous person of the sort who could only be looking for a one night stand. It was fantastic. He barely had to allude to that particular night not being the beginning of a long lasting relationship. The girls completely expected him to leave the next morning. X loved it!

And in between robbing the poshest estates, from Clarence House to a half dozen outside Londin in Oxshott, Radlett and Kingswood, X had his first dealings with villains. He sold a Turner landscape to Professor Chang. Actually, he sold a copy of that painting to Professor Chang. He sold the real one to Slade. The psycho cyclops was freaked out at another Red X showing up at his meet with Andre Leblanc. He made X turn around. "You're not him," he finally pronounced.

"No shit," X answered. "I'm a lot taller and better looking."

It was more than a little creepy the way Slade looked at him, dirty old man creepy.

"How did you get that suit?"

"I stole it from the little bat."

Slade stared and stared at him, seeming to take forever to decide what to do before finally agreeing to buy the painting. He was a pretty freaky, scary character, one of those obsessed nut cakes and powerful enough to fight the whole Titans team and at least get a draw. So X sold him legit stuff the first several times. Then, back in Jump City, the first time he had it set up to sell him a fake, Jinx and the Hive 5 just haaaaad to be there and she pointed out how it was a fake. How frustrating that a girl so hot, would cause trouble. He had to admit, it made her even more interesting. Brains and the whole cat eyed bad girl thing! If only she hadn't brought the whole junior chamber of losers with her! Mammoth? Billy Numerous? Come on.

Back in Jump, X thought he was running a little low on the xenothium that powered the suit and worked out a heist to steal some from Professor Chang. But the little bat was there and expediency required that he team up with the little dork against Chang. When it was over, the little bat swiped his belt. Probably thought he had really accomplished something. But X had already had two backups made. And the little bat apparently didn't see him stow three full large size tubes of xenothium under the cape of his suit. The whole thing was a victory for X. He pulled on a fresh belt when he got back to his penthouse condo and needed just one of the large tubes to fill the storage cylinders in the belt. Silly little bat.

But X almost found himself feeling sympathy for the little bat at times. It was pretty impressive that he could keep up with all the others despite being a midget with no powers. He didn't have anything against heroes, per se. Some people were gonna go into that whole mind set. Fine. What. Ever. It wasn't X's thing. Even if did do some things that people thought were extremely generous.

Fine. Signing on with the Jump City Ballet at a salary of $1 probably seemed generous. And working to bring the assistant director of the Kirov to Jump to run their company probably seemed nice, too. And nobody knew that he made the company pay the other dancers nearly twice what they'd normally get as a condition of him signing on for that 3 year contract. They probably would have thought that was freaking philanthropy or something.

But X would have pointed out that he didn't need the money. Hello! Thirty million dollars, the proceeds of a couple dozen high profile robberies salted away in secret Swiss bank accounts. And, hello! Millions of dollars a year in endorsements in South Korea where Xing Fu Lee, the half korean ballet star and guy who'd humiliated Kobe Bryant endorsed practically everything. His personal favorite was the one where he appeared, in full ballet costume, after a clip of him rejecting Kobe Bryant played and endorsed the local version of the Big Mac. A hot korean girl to one side of him leaned around to look at his backside, staring openly at his rear in white tights and said, in korean,"Amazing buns!".

X smiled straight into the camera, holding up the sandwich the whole time and flawless korean said, "Sesame seed buns."

The other hot korean girl gawked openly at the hemispheric bulge at the front of his tights exclaiming,"It's so big!"

X gave a little extra smile at the camera and said, "Of course. It's Korean. Ours are the biggest. 25% bigger than the american . . . Big Mac."

So, it wasn't just him being a nice guy. He'd have absolutely denied that. He was having a lot of fun.

Some people would've gotten caught up on all his appearances at schools throughout the metro Jump City area. Xing Fu Lee visited half the schools in the region promoting ballet. He'd bring a ballerina with him and dance a solo and do a pas de deux. And inevitably the discussion afterward would turn to how he'd humiliated Kobe Bryant. X would be modest about it with the little kids. At the high schools, there would often be some kid who said it was fake. This is why X began telling high schools to set up for the performance to be given in the school gym. X would ask for the best basketball player in the school to come down and try to score on him. If the kid was nice, X would just block his shot. If he snickered at X wearing white tights, X would block the ball into his face, literally back into the kid's face. Then X would put a silver dollar on top of the backboard and jump and pull it right back off followed by some more lifts with whichever ballerina he'd brought.

Enrollment at Jump City area ballet schools skyrocketed. There were more girls of course, all dreaming of partnering with the fantastically handsome Xing Fu Lee, but now there were even some boys along with them. One of the company executives gushed about how wonderful it was that X was giving back to the art. X scoffed at that. Hello! I'm building an audience to pay my salary in the future. Me a goody two shoes?! Ha!

Few of the 8 girls he slept with in the next week would have said that. Sure, X treated them well but none of them were under any illusions that he was anything but a great time for them. The knew that he wasn't committed to them just like they weren't committed to him. Still, it rankled him a little bit when he saw first one model, then another that he'd dated, out enjoying the night life with the same red haired pretty boy. It happened in Star City, too. This Roy Harper dude was going after the same creme de la creme of cover models as he was. But, finally, X realized that those models and ballerinas would have to be with someone when he was elsewhere. This carrot topped dude'll have to do as a substitute.

The idea of him being a goody two shoes was also laughable to X because he was becoming more and more enmeshed in the upper echelon of crime and villains. He picked his spots very carefully. Before approaching any villain he did a lot of recon centering first on their henchmen. Invariably these lackeys talked too much about their gig. Almost invariably they were underpaid by their villain bosses. It was easy for Red X to follow these guys, get some dirt on them, some info and hideout locations and upcoming heists and then use that.

He was very careful. But not all the time. When news spread all around Jump that there was some kind of young heroes get together going to take place at Titans Tower, some sort of celebration of Kid Flash becoming a Titan, he couldn't resist going just to tweak Robin.

Christ, there were like 30 of them there, a ton of hot chicks and a dude or two who interested him. Okay, Aqualad. Fine. He wasn't embarassed to admit that the occasional guy did it for him. But he'd lost sight of the atlantean in the crowd of dancing heroes. Surprisingly for such a bunch of stiff do-gooders a lot of them could really dance. Across the room, not dancing of course, he saw Robin. X turned the Red X suit cloaking off and then back on again, letting Captain Uptight get all flustered about it. Then he left the great room and went downstairs. He was going to break into Robin's room and dust all Robin's pants with a newer, totally unbearable Atomic Balm when he caught just a glimpse of red and yellow then, BANG.

Collision.

He fell to the ground only mumbling "Stupid Kid Flash" to himself before losing consciousness.

As he started coming out of it, he didn't know how much later, he heard voices. He kept his eyes closed and face expressionless to not let his captors know he was listening. As the fog continued to clear, he realized that he was lying on his back. And he was naked. Someone had gotten the Red X suit off him. Damn. And as the fog continued to clear, he started hearing two voices more and more clearly. He opened his eyes so slightly that no one could notice.

"He's . . extremely handsome, isn't he?" muttered the dark haired one, who was, in fact, X thought, gorgeous himself.

"Is that why you're practically tent poling your suit?"

"I am not. Not significantly anyway. Was there alcohol in that punch?"

"Duh. Did you really think there wouldn't be?"

"But, Robin said there wouldn't be!"

"The little bat's a bit out of touch, fishstick. But so what?"

"I told you. It-it makes me feel so . . sexual."

"Hahaha. You want me to bring Kid Flash in here?"

"No! Please! He doesn't know. But . . . Speedy . . . ?

"Yeah?"

"I-I've seen this fellow before. I-I know I have. I know him. That derriere! I just . . can't remember where I've seen him."

They were both staring at him, for minutes it seemed. The dark haired one, Aqualad, was so hot. X stared back through his eyelashes. He didn't feel this way often, just Jeremy, Nikolai and now Aqualad. And he didn't try to deny it when he did. Finally he said screw it and just opened his eyes.

"Not so dangerous without that," said a smirking Speedy pointing to his Red X suit tossed over the chair behind the archer.

"There are a lot of different ways to be dangerous," smirked X rising to a crouch and then stepping off the bed to stand nose to nose with the atlantean, who looked flustered. He pulled the raven haired dude's gloves off while he sputtered and Speedy snickered behind him. Then he kissed him all the while pulling off the guy's sleek blue unitard.

The atlantean might have hit him or dodged him or resisted. He only kissed back, first hesitantly then enthusiastically while in the background, he first heard the archer sputtering then his bow, quivver and utility belt falling to the floor. X looked right into the dark, purple eyes of the stunning atlantean. He was smitten. From that point on, everything was a frenetic, ecstatic blur. There was no starting point, no stopping point just three boys and hours of hot sex. Somewhere in that time he got the archer's mask off and it immediately registered. Roy Harper. Speedy was that other player sex addict, Roy Harper. Ahahaha!

Having this arrow in his quivver, as it were, made him comfortable falling asleep in sort of enemy territory. When he woke, sandwiched between Speedy and Aqualad, he could somehow tell that Speedy, in front of him, was sound asleep but that the gorgeous atlantean was wide awake.

"I know who you are," he whispered, lips touching the super thief's ear lobe.

Wanting to ferret out a bluff, X demanded, "Who?" softly over his shoulder.

He heard the atlantean sigh. "You're Xing Fu Lee. You're a wonderful ballet dancer."

X took a long slow breath. "Yeah? So?"

The atlanatean seemed flustered, thought X. He was not the type to play hardball even with the bad guys. "Do I have to spell it all out?"

"Maybe not," said X, still not moving from where he lay between them. "Because I know who he is."

There was a long pause and then the atlantean, also trying to ferret out a bluff demanded, "Who?"

"Roy Harper. He's been after some of the same models as me."

He could almost hear the dark beauty's frown. "When was this?"

"Mostly a couple months ago."

The atlantean sighed. Somehow X just knew that the archer had been cheating on the amazing atlantean.

"You see girls, too?" he finally asked, sounding as if almost absent mindedly changing the subject away from the cheating.

"Mostly. I've only been with a couple guys. What about you?"

"Me? This is . . this is just a phase I'm going through."

X's chuckle almost woke up the archer in front of him.

"Seriously?"

The atlantean's whisper had a tone of indignation. "It's the norm for atlanteans to have a phase of . . experimentation."

"Okay. But does everyone understand that?"

"No," said that atlantean with a long slow sigh and X felt him grip him more tightly. He was incredibly strong for his size. They probably could have worn each other's clothes with only the smallest alterations but the atlantean must have been at least twice as strong as he was. Easily.

"Even some of my . . colleagues don't extend any sympathy to me. They become unhinged with discomfort at even such innocent things as my appreciation of your artistry," said the atlantean. He let out a very heavy sigh onto the back of X's neck.

"Well I couldn't give a shit less what you do on your own time. But other people might care."

The atlantean's breath caught.

"If anything any of you do makes use of my identity, then his," X nodded slightly toward Speedy, "gets out and the two of you get outted. Is that understood?"

There was a long pause before the softest possible "yes".

"The three of us go on just like before, Red X, Speedy and Aqualad. Just like nobody learned anything. Agreed?"

"Mmm hmm."

X ever so delicately got up from between the two of them, his grace so perfect that Speedy didn't notice. He pulled on his dance belt and all the parts of the Red X suit except for the skull face mask. He went over and gave wide awake Aqualad a slight push to be up against Speedy. The atlantean, obviously in a pensive frame of mind, gave him an interesting circumspect look.

"You are going to just leave and not rummage through the Tower?"

X nodded. "Right after this," he said bending over to give the amazing atlantean a huge kiss. Aqualad was gasping for breath as Red X put on his face mask and left.

There were a couple more years of Red X memories for Kid Flash to sift through. There were more heists and there was exhibitionist Xing Fu Lee becoming more and more the biggest star in the world of ballet. And there was a parade of ballerinas and cover models and, ecchhh, another dude. Finally, Kid Flash, now just a disembodied voice in his own body while Red X controlled his super speedster form, reached the present.

He'd mentally sifted through all of Red X's memories or at least a series of them that were linked by associatiion in the 10,000 seconds that Red X was in control. At last, he felt that much more pleasurable sensation of almost reverse parachuting, of almost jumping into the cockpit of a moving plane. He was in control of his own body again.

He was back in his and Jinx's room at the Tower and immediately he picked up his communicator and pressed *BB. Gar picked up.

"It's me again. I'm in control of myself again. Any progress?"

The green teen first checked the time and nodded. Yup. Just a bit more than 10,000 seconds since the last switch. It's Wally again.

"Any progress, Gar?"

The shape shifter sighed. "I don't think I can figure it out, Wally. I'm sorry, dude. But that fricking transporter runs on like quantum mechanics and martian science or something." He saw the speedster's irritation and quickly added. "But I know someone who can figure it out."

"Who?"

"Duh. Cyborg."

"But he's at that World Robotics Expo thing. He won't be back till tomorrow!" complained the speedster.

"I'm sorry, Wally, but I don't know what else to do. You want me to send an emergency alert to Cy and get him back here now?"

Kid Flash sighed. These robotics things were incredibly important to Cyborg. It was what he was, for god's sake, at least a large part of what he was. It was good that Gar was going to own up to his mistake. But he felt guilty about the prospect of dragging Cy away from something that was so important to him.

"No. He was talking about that Robotics thing for a week before this. I've sort of got it under control. I just hope he can split Red X out of me."

"Cy knows that transporter inside out already, dude. If anyone can, it's him."

Wally nodded. "KF out."

"BB out."

Kid Flash sighed. Ugh. Have to share my own body till tomorrow.

He flopped down on his back on his and Jinx's bed.

_Oh quit whining, carrot top. I notice you've gone through my memories._

Kid Flash sighed again. Another feature of the transporter having spliced Red X's mind into his body. He could hear the guy's voice clear as a bell in his thoughts.

"I-I wanted to see what you were like, what made you tick," said the speedster softly to the empty room.

_And?_

There was a tone of cocky expectation to the super thief's voice in his head.

"Don't you . . don't you want to be with someone?"

_Ahahaha! That hasn't been much of a problem for me._

"You know what I mean! You can access my thoughts just like I can access yours."

_Yeah, but I don't always want to bother. You're such a nerd._

"Maybe I haven't been with a hundred fifty different girls . . . and some guys too! God!"

_Oh calm down. If you going through my memories works like when I go through yours in this shared head, then you felt exactly what I felt. You enjoyed it! Hahahahaha!_

Kid Flash fumed. "Look. Don't you want to be in love with someone? You-you just fuck girls without even considering doing it as part of a deeper affection."

_My affection can't help but go plenty deep with my equipment, speedster! I-_

"You know what I mean. You're a smart guy. You treat all the times Jinx and I slept together like your personal porn collection, rummaging through my memories over and over. I can feel you doing it when I'm in control of my body and you're in the background. Don't you feel the-the love between us?"

_What are you, the relationship police or something?_

"No. I just-"

_Do you realize what a freak you are, what a couple of freaks you and her are? You marry as teenagers and it's working out?!?_

"We're lucky, I guess. Don't you . . don't you want to feel the same way?"

Red X didn't reply.

Kid Flash waited a minute and then started idly picking up this and that book and reading at random. At last a book interested him and he lost himself in it for the rest of the 10,000 seconds that he was in control of his body, the duration of the period that he and Red X alternated their minds being in control of his Kid Flash body thanks to the way the transporter had spliced them together.

But ,while Red X hadn't said anything back to Kid Flash, he fumed at what he perceived as Kid Flash's holier than thou attitude trying to tell him what he should be doing in his private life. Who the hell was he, some carrot topped nerd who got hit by lightning and covered in chemicals and came out of it with super speed. He didn't even have a girl friend before meeting Jinx! Not one! Kissed a few girls and then, boom! A wife! What. The. Fuck. What kind of road map is that for anyone else?! And sure it all looks perfect now but wait till something happens! Wait till they're really tested!

Red X fumed on and on till 10,000 seconds had elapsed since Kid Flash had retaken control of his body. X enjoyed the jumping back into the jet cockpit sensation and got up from the bed, where Kid Flash had been reading. He was hungry. Very hungry.

"You should have eaten. I feel like I could bankrupt some all you can eat place right now."

_Sorry. I got engrossed in the book._

"You're such a nerd," sniffed Red X running his red gloved hands down the side of his super speedster body. The guy might be a nerd but this body was infuckingcredible, he had to admit.

He zipped to the Tower kitchen one floor up and yanked open the stainless steel door of the huge fridge. In a tenth of a second, he scarfed down some left over turkey on a platter in the front of the fridge. But he was still hungry. He bent over examining all the possibilities.

Starfire's giggle preceded her hand making contact with his butt by twenty three ten thousandths of a second. Simultaneously to normal people. Practically early by an eternity to a speedster. Kid Flash was always dodging and fending off the completely uninhibited Tamaranean's flirty sexual gestures. In that twenty three ten thousandths of a second, Red X saw an opportunity and a release for his fuming anger at the speedster's suggestion of how he should run his private life.

SLAP.

The Tamaranean giggled some more.

_No! No! You can't! You can't!_

Slowly. Very slowly Red X straightened up in front of the fridge, letting Starfire's hand stay where it was as he closed the door.

He turned his, formerly Kid Flash's, body around very slowly to face his Tamaranean teammate. She still had her hand there. He did nothing to remove it. He looked her in the eye.

_No! Come on! Please! Don't . . _

Red X, in command of Kid Flash's body, looked right at Starfire. She'd put on just a few pounds in the last couple years and could not have filled out her peculiar uniform any better. Absent the hair, the gold skin and whatever that was on her forehead, she could be a star stripper in Vegas. She was completely hot. And as he reached for her, Red X chuckled. Kid Flash wasn't able to stop him. He put his hand in the same place on her that hers was on him.

He remembered, from going through Kid Flash's recollections, Starfire telling him of a Tamaranean custom. It was called, rather innocuously, Appreciation Day. Raven had rolled her eyes. On this special day of the 843 day Tamaranean year, anyone could express their appreciation of anyone else's beauty, or so Starfire had explained it.

"You mean . . it's okay to cheat that day?" Beast Boy had asked, quickly diagnosing the real dynamic.

Starfire had nodded in her perky way.

Red X put his speedster lips to hers vibrating them ever so slightly. Starfire sighed in delight and a vibrating tongue entered her mouth. She'd barely realized that when she found herself swept off her feet. Red X, in Kid Flash's body, had picked her up.

"Remember that Appreciation Day you told us about once?" he whispered.

"Yes."

"That's what day it is today."

At first Starfire looked slightly confused. "But it is not for another four hundred earth d-"

She saw the look in his bright blue eyes. She giggled. "Oh. I get it."


	13. Tapping that Tamaranian

Xing Fu Lee, the world famous ballet dancer had done a lot of girls in a lot of ways. Some of 'em had to be romanced quietly and softly first. Some of 'em wanted a lot of snappy repartee back and forth. Others didn't care about talking. They were just into the sex and wanted to get it on. But he'd never met a girl as wild as Starfire.

He wouldn't have had a chance at her as Red X. But since he had snuck into the transporter tube in police headquarters in Paris with the suit's cloaking mode on and not been seen by Kid Flash apparently testing the functioning of the transporter tube, and because stupid fucking Beast Boy hadn't been paying attention when the transporter displayed a message telling him there were two guys in the tube, the transporter had zapped him into Kid Flash's body. Now they alternated controlling his speedster body.

And damn but that Tamaranian princess sure did like her some speedster booty. X sped her to her room stopping just inside the door and she pulled the Kid Flash suit right off him. She was not going to be one of those ones who had to be convinced and cajoled. But, then, the ones who constantly flirted with hot guys and tried to slap them on the butt did not suddenly become shy behind closed doors.

This was true even if they had a bed covered with stuffed animals, okay, weird stuffed animals, what looked like a shark with antlers, a two headed snake and some kind of turtle/eagle hybrid among them, even with 40 or 50 of them across the bed, the girl was wild. X undressed her at super speed and she giggled. He took her in his now pale, pinkish arms. Even after a day inside this speedster body it seemed weird. He was so pale skinned, at the limit of what was normal. So was his equipment, which X had to admit was an upgrade even before considering the ability to vibrate said johnson.

He didn't spare the speedster tricks that morning with the Tamaranian. Slightly vibrating lips wherever he kissed her, super fast tongue and of course the amazing magic johnson, the ultimate satisfier. He used them all. Starfire begged for more. She was practically insatiable. In one brief lull between times he wondered how the little bat had ever satisfied her. He did her every which way. As a super speedster, his refraction time was practically zero. Even before he finished catching his breath he was ready to go again. And she wanted to. So they did. They did half the positions in the Kama Sutra, everything X had learned boinking ballerinas and cover models the world over. Missionary. Butterfly. Wheelbarrow. Medusa Variant. Tigress. Concealed door. Transverse Lute. Snake Trap. Kama's Wheel. And on and on. He gave that gold skinned girl the greatest morning of her life.

And, not surprisingly, Starfire turned out to be a bit of a screamer. Of course he couldn't resist making her say it a couple different times as she was gasping out "Yes! . . . Yes!" and then some tamaranean phrase, "globnork my zork" or something like that. But she had to say it. Had to.

"Say it! It's much better with me than it ever was with Robin! Say it!"

"You are . . . you are bigger and better . . . than Robin . . . ever was."

But it wasn't as though it was one of those cases of X doing all the work and the girl just being the object of his affection and attention. She was incredibly strong and demanded to be on top half the time. What's more, her power of flight was emotionally triggered, resulting in their floating in the air, levitating over the bed three different times while he was banging away. This was one conquest X wouldn't soon forget. Not the least reason was that the girl had . . well . . her . . . it was . . .

Of course, why would the body of an alien girl be exactly like the body of earth girls? It'd be more amazing, more miraculous if it was. It was amazing enough that she was so physically similar to an earth girl. But her . . ! It was . . . ! Nope, X wouldn't soon forget this particular sportfuck. Done using another guy's body with a girl whose vajayjay was . . . !

Another reason was that X prided himself on so pleasing any girl he was with that she begged twice. First, after being so pleased at X's technique, he made sure they begged him to do more. Then, as his stamina and desire for it kept going beyond theirs they had to beg, or at least ask, if that wasn't enough.

Oh, Starfire begged for more but even using his super speed butt to bang away at more than normal speed and vibrating his speedster johnson for probably the greatest nearly three hours of sex any girl on earth had ever had, she still wanted more.

As the 10,000 second time limit at which he and Kid Flash switched control of his body approached, X was hoping that it would arrive as he was banging away at Starfire so that Mr. Goody Two Shoes would be the one piloting the plan as they were fucking. He'd heard a lot of his voice in the back of his head as he was doing his teammate. At first there were a lot of "No! You can't!"'s and "Please! Stop! Don't make me cheat on Jinx!"'s. But as the sex just kept going on and on, better and better what he mostly heard were gasps and groans of pure pleasure. The simple fact, X realized was that Starfire was super hot and though he had never acted on it, there was a part of Kid Flash that had always wanted to boink her brains out. So, when he tried to stop Red X from picking her up and bringing her to her room and then kissing and fucking her like he'd stopped Red X from robbing banks using his body, he couldn't. He didn't want to rob banks. Not at all. But part of him wanted to tap that Tamaranian.

X couldn't help but grin extra while doing Starfire and hearing Kid Flash's simultaneous reluctance and ecstasy in the back of his mind. Oh no. X woudn't forget this conquest soon.

He was making his way back from the bathroom, smirking at the gold skinned princess spread eagled atop her covers and still moaning with delight. He approached her and crouched atop her. She played with his hair.

"I knew you were a true orange hair," she sighed.

"Yeah," said X with a quick glance down. "The carpet matches the drapes." He bent down to kiss her but ended up pecking her on the cheek because she'd turned her head.

"Ha. And Raven said that the gold carpet does not match the purple curtains," she giggled.

"Huh?"

"The carpet and the drapes, the curtains. You agreed with me that they match."

He moved in closer now kissing her neck up and down. "That wasn't what I meant, Kory. What were you talking about?"

Her hands were all over him now. "You are an orange hair. On Tamaran that means that you will be a wonderful partner in bed."

"Sort of 'Kiss Me, I'm Irish!', huh?"

And just after uttering those words, X felt the same sensation as several times before. It was like ejecting from the cockpit of a jet plane. Only you never landed. You just kept parachuting down but never reached ground, not till you got control of the body again in 10,000 seconds. Till then he could feel every sensation the body felt, hear, taste, see, smell, everything but he wouldn't be able to move a muscle to control Kid Flash's body.

For Kid Flash, the opposite was happening. He suddenly found himself back in control of his own body.

He was naked, in Starfire's room. Crouching over her, his lips an inch from hers. He had one hand on her gold skinned left breast. She had one on his but and the other firmly wrapped around the shaft of-

"Ahh!" he yelped and jumped three feet in the air while vibrating that certain part of him fast enough to squeeze free of her grip and retreated to the far end of the room.

"Come back here most pleasing speedster teammate," she giggled, surprised at her lover's completely panicked expression.

All that he could think of was that he was now a dead man.

Oh no! Oh no! Jinx will kill me. She'll hex me into little pieces and then burn them as incense. She's going to kill me and she has every right to.

He looked frantically around the room for his uniform. It wasn't easy to find. For two seconds after popping out of his ring, his uniform expanded on contact with the air but the odd molecular composition of it was such that, after those two seconds, the Kid Flash suit was constantly trying to shrink back down to the tiny size that let it fit into the ring. It was why it was so tight on him. And now, outside the ring and not on him it was only about two inches long which made it hard to find among 50 stuffed animals on the floor of Starfire's room.

At last, underneath what looked like a stuffed carnivorous sheep with fangs and claws, Kid Flash found his suit and the dance belt he wore underneath. He pulled them on with considerable effort and started to zip out of the room. He stopped at the door and turned to Starfire laying there naked atop her covers. Suddenly he couldn't stop thinking of her . . .! It was . . . !

He gulped and tried to regain his composure.

"I . . I hope you're okay. I . . I never wanted to-to use you," he said to her, dissatisfied that he couldn't think of anything better. He was still thinking of her alien vajayjay. My god. It's . . . !

She giggled and then let out a soft moan of pleasure. "Silly earth boy. We appreciate each other."

Kid Flash vibrated through her door, sped down the hall and then through the door to his and Jinx's room. He went straight to the bathroom, pulled off his Kid Flash suit and took a long, steamy shower wishing he could wash off the stain of having cheated as easily as he could the cinnamon smell of Starfire's saliva.

After drying off, he felt no better. In the back of his mind, Red X taunted him.

_Thought you and Jinx were forever and all that shit, but it looks like you were just waiting for someone to back that gold skinned Tamaranian tush up to you, huh?_

"You asshole! You tricked Starfire!" said Kid Flash to his empty room.

_Not exactly difficult._

"Shut up! You're such a self-centered prick. You think you should be able to bang anyone, take anyone's money, do anything and it's all okay, because it's you. That justifies anything."

_Well, I never said I was a goody two shoes hero like you. I never said I was mister perfect relationship. Only, gee, seems like underneath all that perfect relationship, complete devotion to Jinx crap was a dude who wants some sweet pussy as much as any other dude. Even pussy that's . . _

Kid Flash didn't respond for almost a minute as both of them couldn't avoid thinking about it again. Her . . . ! It's . . . !!

_And, don't bother telling me to shut up, because you can't shut me up. You can't do anything to me when I'm stuck in the background in this body. And when I'm in control again, all you can do is stop me from pulling off robberies._

"Oh yeah?" said Kid Flash raising his fist in front of his face. And then, after a second for Red X to realize what he was going to do, he punched himself hard, 20 times in the face. He fell dizzily back onto his and Jinx's bed. It hurt him and he'd nearly knocked himself unconscious but knowing that he'd hurt Red X just as much in the process made it worthwhile.

_Ow! What the-what the fuck was that? . . . Are y-you gonna g-go all Ed Norton in Fight Club on yourself? Don't be fu-fucking stupid._

Satisfied at having delivered some pain to Red X, Kid Flash didn't think about him. All he could think about was Jinx. She was going to be back the next day. How would he explain this?

Um . . yeah, I screwed Starfire every way possible and enjoyed it but it wasn't me. It was my body but someone else was controlling it. Yeah, the hexes will probably hit home about two seconds after that one. Maybe Starfire won't talk about it? Oh shit how can I count on that? She'll bring it up completely innocently as thought teammates sharing each other's spouses for sex is perfectly natural. Maybe it is on Tamaran. But here? She'll hex me to death. She's going to totally kill me. And I deserve it. Why couldn't I stop him? Do I care more about some freaking bank than about Jinx? If we were living a simple life, a normal life this kind of shit wouldn't happen. We could just be Wally and Virginia without people trying to kill us or testing out machines that teleport you across the planet.

Sigh.

Kid Flash grew more and more despondent. He had always been faithful to Jinx. He really did love her and he knew how brutal her childhood and adolescence had been. He had wanted to show her, through his complete faithfulness to her that there was at least one person who would never turn on her, ever. She could trust him and maybe working off that foundation she could build up to trusting other people. And now, he'd reveled in screwing Starfire, her teammate, an unbelievable number of times in just under three hours. He didn't stop him. How hard had he tried? A few ineffectual no, you can't do thats. After he saw Starfire naked and they started going at it, he couldn't even muster up that.

She's going to kill me and I soooooo deserve it.

Kid Flash lay there completely oblivious to the time. They didn't have a training session planned and no calls came in. He just lay there staring up at the ceiling feeling terrible for how this would hurt Jinx. He wished he could beat the crap out of Red X but what was he going to do, beat himself into a serious concussion just to get at Red X?

When 10,000 seconds had passed since the last switch, it surprised him that all of a sudden he was feeling that sensation like he was ejecting out of the cockpit of a jet plain in mid flight. And only then did another dark thought cross his mind. What else might Red X do?

Red X, in control off Kid Flash's super speedster body, quickly zipped up one floor to the 14th and got a sandwich from the Tower kitchen. He passed Robin busily typing away at the Tower communications center. He looked over his shoulder. Some kind of communique to Interpol. X brought one red gloved hand down hard on little bat's head and flattened his gelled hair spikes.

"Hey!"

X finished the soda and a can of green tea and paused in the hallway. Beast Boy passed him on the way to his room looking very wary. The green teen knew the schedule of the body control changes now. He knew that X had just taken control a couple minutes ago. X considered playing some mischievous pranks on the pretty boy shape shifter but decided to let that go for the moment.

He knew what he wanted. And he had a fair idea, from his previous scouring of Kid Flash's memories, that it was possible. Of course the carrot topped nerd had never realized it. But it was. Where to look, he wondered, pressing on red gloved finger to his speedster lips.

"Ahh!"

He sped off.

_No!_

A moment later, in the Tower library, on the 12th floor, Raven reached for a book of poetry, Rilke's The Duino Elegies. A red gloved hand grasped it on the shelf at the same time as her. Their eyes met.


	14. Doing a demi demon

"Oh, sorry," said Red X, controlling Kid Flash's body now, to Raven beside him in the aisle between bookcases of the Titans library.

She shrugged at the speedster. "You can have it."

"No, no. I . . " he looked her right in the eye about to say something then seemed to think better of it and turned away. "You should take it. I was going to get it for . . ," he paused and sighed, ". . for Jinx but she won't be back till tomorrow. Probably wouldn't matter . . anyway." He let out a disconsolate sigh and moved down the aisle a few feet.

Raven raised an eyebrow but kept going, looking for another book and, at last, finding it. As she was looking, she noticed Kid Flash, repeatedly glancing her way with a particularly intense expression on his face. Then, they bumped into each other by the main entrance to the several rooms that made up the library.

"Oh, gosh, sorry." he muttered as he caught her by the shoulders. "I'm so used to zipping around here with the place empty. I really love these places. I don't care if that makes me a hopeless nerd. I don't want everything to be on a Kindle or an iPad. I like holding books. I like the look of them, the feel of them. I don't want everything you read to be out of a single nondescript piece of plastic."

"I couldn't agree more," said Raven softly with what almost seemed like a smile to X.

"That's why if . . . " Kid Flash stopped himself. He shook his head and turned away.

"What?"

"No, forget it."

"By Azareth, what, Wally?"

He turned slowly around and gave a long, deep sigh. "I . . I don't know how a person can possibly bring this up to another person he so deeply respects and so much likes. So I'll-I'll just do it," he said and then paused again.

She was in the grip of anticipation now.

"What?"

He took another long slow sigh and then spoke looking her right in those beautiful violet eyes.

"You know that Jinx is away at her mother's farm in the hills east of Jump, right?"

"Sure. I saw her go."

"But you don't really know why."

"What do you mean?"

"Well . . . you know how-how competitive Jinx is . . "

"Of course. She was the driving force behind the HIVE 5. Where've they been since she left?"

"Right. Nowhere. Well . . a few weeks ago, I found out something about her past and-and since then," sigh "well, did you know a person can even be competitive in a relationship?"

Raven's brow furrowed.

"No. It's true. It happens. Look . . I . . I don't fault her for being that way. It's what allowed her to survive being ostracized even as a little kid. The stories I could tell you about how horrible people were to her . . ! If she hadn't been so willful . . ."

Raven nodded, empathetic.

"So, like I say, it's how she survived. I don't begrudge her her spirit. I love it. But it's . . ," he looked down at his feet now. "It's driving us apart now. You see, I . . I found out from Kyd Wykkyd that Jinx had had a fling with Red X-"

Raven caught her breath. Her eyes went wider.

"It was before we were married!" he added. "I don't . . blame her or-or think there was anything wrong with that. I mean, the guy's incredibly cool. He's got a great body. I mean, the one now, of course, not . . -" X noticed that Raven was smiling and stopped.

"What?" he asked her.

"Nothing. It's just. I was remembering when he first appeared on the scene, the Red X there is now, not Robin. And Robin went to great pains to try to convince us that it wasn't him, as if we wouldn't notice that this other guy was about 5 inches taller and had this amazing pair of-" she started forming the shape of Red X's butt in the air and stopped herself.

Red X controlling Kid Flash's body smiled at her. "It's okay. Even all us guys notice."

She faintly smiled.

"But it-it doesn't bother me. It was after I'd first met her but before we had made any sort of commitment to each other. It doesn't bother me, no matter how cool he is and how much of a nerd I am by comparison. Probably every girl wants to be with him. So what? But . . you know what I said about being competitive even in a relationship?"

Raven nodded.

"Since Jinx saw Kyd Wykkyd sign that news to me she just can't accept that it doesn't bother me, that I'm not," he made air quotes "one up on her, somehow. It doesn't mean anything. But she's always on edge, hyper vigilant that I'm not going to think of her the same way or that I'm going to somehow look down on her. There's been so much tension since I found out a month ago."

"Really? I thought you two had seemed as close as ever."

He sighed. "I wish. Only on the surface. Things have been getting more and more strained. Finally, get ready for this one, she came up with a solution. Are you ready?"

Raven nodded.

"She wants me to sleep with someone else to even things out."

"What?!"

"Yes."

"So . . you've been wondering if I'd . . . "

He nodded.

She was taken aback and gazed off to one side trying to wrap her mind around this news.

"I know it's a crazy situation," he blurted out. "How can I ask that of you? It's not right, I know. Heck, I-I don't even know if I can do it. It's insane in a way. But when I tried to think of a girl who was attractive and smart and had all the qualities I care about, other than her, I . . I kept thinking of . . . you."

He stepped closer to her now. "It's almost like a catch 22. The more wonderful a girl is, the less likely she is to do something like this in these circumstances, right? But for me . . for . . our marriage. Will you . . . . . will you . . . "

Raven let out a long slow breath and gave the slightest nod.

Red X, controlling Kid Flash's body, allowed himself a millisecond long smirk. Knew it! Knew she wanted to fuck him! Knew it!!

Slowly, he pulled back the hood of her cloak revealing her violet hair and letting him see clearly her light gray face and big beautiful eyes. "You're so pretty. Still, I-I don't know how to go forward doing something like this. Maybe if you took the initiative . . "

She stepped up on her tip toes and just touched her lips to his. He gave her a bashful smile and she actually seemed to smile at him before taking his red gloved hand in hers and leading him out of the Tower library. He made sure to say nothing including when they got to her room. Holy shit, the place was spooky. Did she have black light bulbs in the lamps beside her bed?

She made him stay in one exact spot just inside the door and then covered up a large mirror and some books sitting open on wooden pedastals. He sniffed at the air. Is that brimstone? Well, this is certainly different.

All that done, she returned to where he was and pulled his cowl down around his neck.

"I always liked the wings," she said. "Makes you think of Mercury. It's such a nice touch."

She continued pulling his uniform off him, which was actually quite difficult to do. But after much tugging and straining he was there naked. She stepped forward and kissed him. X wanted to rip her cloak, leotard and top right off her in return. But he held back. Everything went very slowly. Compared to doing it with Starfire, this was like glaciers in love or giant sea tortoises. But he got in the rhythm of it. She was all about slowly building quality. X knew that game. There'd been with a red haired Vogue cover model in Paris who insisted on it being like this.

At least, things had to start real slow. He kissed her and slowly removed her belt. He kissed her some more and removed her gloves. More kissing. Her boots. Kissing. Cloak. Kissing. Leotard. Kissing. Leggings.

He vibrated his lips ever so slightly to give a special tingle to their kisses and gave a couple similar jolts with his tongue. She was breathing deeply now. Oh, she's gonna be a moaner. He felt sure of that. Starfire's the screamer. Raven's the moaner.

He put her down on the bed gently and whispered some Rilke to her in between kissing her breasts and her neck. Her hands were all over him now. He kissed her in all the strategic spots and some of the less likely ones noting her reaction, where she wanted to be touched. X was an expert at this, alternating from one special spot to another to make it feel even better. It wasn't till several minutes later that they got to the act itself.

But for all her desire for sensitive foreplay, an hour later, he was thrusting away with his magic johnson just like with Starfire not just because X wanted it that way but because she did. They did it 8 different ways in their nearly 10,000 seconds together. But after each time, she made him lay there a few minutes with her, lying beside her or underneath her. Basically, she wanted to cuddle. He guessed that she never got that in her life. Having sex was already a big risk for her, setting emotions free. A little spooning afterward wasn't much additional risk. He pretended to be all conflicted. How can I do this? I shouldn't have done this. But, of course, she was having a great time and was more than willing to talk him through his "deep ambivalence" so that they could fuck again in another minute. Somehow, against all odds, she was able to break through his reservations and he'd be banging away minutes later.

At one point X worried that she would somehow detect that it was him not Kid Flash controlling the body she was snuggling up against. But he remembered that she'd told Kid Flash something about the way his speed force energy came into his body totally screwing up her reading his mind or seeing his life force.

X almost felt guilty about it. The girl really was special. And she was incredibly hot with that cloak and everything off her. She had pale gray skin and big dark eyes and violet hair but she was a normal seeming girl, otherwise, physically. Well, much better than normal, an extremely hot normal seeming girl in great shape with a nice rack and a tight round ass. By the end of his 10,000 second period of control of the body, they were both behaving completely without inhibitions. X was pushing her buttons so perfectly, with the help of his temporary speedster body, that he wasn't sure what she'd do. This was incredibly powerful Raven, after all. And he had her gasping and moaning and just barely in control of, well, anything for minute after minute. It was only afterward that he learned of the reports of a giant purple happy face somehow appearing in the sky over Jump City and Fourth of July style fireworks in the most amazing range of colors exploding high over the city with a power that dwarfed the city's actual Fourth of July display and whose origins no one could seem to explain.

He came back from her bathroom, shockingly just like the others in the Tower, no skull faucet handles or taps dispensing blood, and lay down beside her after their last time. She sighed and lay her head down on his chest, a beatific smile on her face.

"Maybe emotions are worth the risk if you can be this happy," she finally whispered.

It was at this precise moment that Red X felt the accustomed sensation, like a pilot ejecting from the cockpit of a jet fighter then parachuting down ever down. He wasn't in control of the speedster's body any more. Kid Flash was.

And he was terrified.

He was in Raven's room. He was naked in Raven's room, in her bed and she, also naked, was lying on top of him.

He realized he had his hand on her butt and frantically pulled it away. She had one of her hands around his equipment. His eyes were wide with fear. How do I get out of here?! What if she realizes what went on for the last, almost 3 hours? Does she banish me to some realm of everlasting excruciating pain? He didn't want to find out.

As carefully as possible, he wriggled out from under her then got off the bed and pulled on his dance belt and Kid Flash uniform.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sitting up in bed but not bothering to cover herself.

He remembered Red X's lie.

"I can't stay any longer. If I do then I'm enjoying it for it's own sake. I've-I've done what I have to do to satisfy-to satisfy Jinx. Please don't think of my leaving as in any way a commentary on you. You're a wonderful girl a-a beautiful girl. I . . " he didn't know what else to say and sped out of there, vibrating right through her door and out into the hall. From there he sped not to his room but Beast Boy's.

He knocked on the door a hundred times.

"Jeez, dude, come in!" came the shout from inside.

Kid Flash walked in. The room was as incredibly messy as usual only now with copies of contracts with modeling agencies in among the detritus on the floor. Beast Boy was at his computer on one side of the room. He didn't even look at Kid Flash.

"I programmed my communicator for that 10,000 second thing. It beeped a minute ago, so you're Wally not Red X, right?"

"Yeah, Gar. But we've got a real problem."

"Just a second, dude. Check out this Youtube. This guy made a video with his two cats. He trained 'em to-"

"Gar!"

At last Beast Boy looked up from his laptop. "Jeez. All the knocks and now yelling at me. Maybe Robin's taking a turn running your butt."

"Gar we've got a problem. A serious fucking problem."

"I know, I know. Red X is in your body. So-"

"Gar! In the last, like, 9 hours he did both Star and Raven!"

Beast Boy jumped to his feet. "What?! He did Star and . . and . . Rae?"

Kid Flash explained it without going into details of all the things he'd done in bed with the two female Titans.

"We've gotta do something, Gar. We can't let him run wild. Who knows what, or who he'll do next?"

"Well, jeez, don't look at me when you say that?" chuckled Beast Boy.

"He's slept with guys before, Gar. And you are a model now, too, so . . . "

"What?! Okay, it's time to stop this guy. Do you really think he'd try to do me?" he asked, both hands sliding behind him.

"Nah, probably not. He mostly goes for girls. But I went through his memories of his life for hours and he has been with some guys."

Beast Boy made a face of extreme displeasure.

"Are you sure?"

"Gar, we share a mind, practically now. I could recall everything he had stored in his memory. It was incredibly vivid, like it was actually happening to me."

"Ohmygod! So it felt like you and some dude actually . . "

Kid Flash made a face of extreme displeasure.

"Yeah, can we change the subject now and concentrate on the task at hand? We have to stop him."

"He really did Rae?"

Kid Flash nodded.

Beast Boy sighed. "I don't know why I'm so disappointed. It's not like she and I were a couple or anything. Maybe I still held out hope. I don't know."

"Can you . . can you change into some animal that could sting me or bite me right at the end of the 10,000 second period so that I'm pretty much unconscious for the 10,000 seconds that he's in control?"

"Dude! That's a tall order. The problem is that you recover so fast. And where's the line between a snake filling you with enough venome to knock even you out for three hours and filling you with enough venom to kill you. You're kind of a freak, Wally."

Ove the next few minutes, Kid Flash ran through a whole bunch of suggestions of poisonous or incapacitating animals, snakes, scorpions, spiders etc. But Gar shot them all down. Either not strong enough or life threatening. The two of them were silent for several moments.

"Did she like it?"

"Huh?"

"Raven. Did she like it?"

Kid Flash nodded. "Every time."

"Every time?!?!? How many times did you, or he do her?"

"What's it matter whether I tell you six, eight or ten, Gar?"

"Ten times?!?! You fucked my girl ten times?! Some pal you are!"

"Gar! When did she become your girl? And I didn't have anything to do with it. I got out of bed and got out of there as soon as it was me in control."

"You were in bed with her?!" Beast Boy hung his head, crestfallen.

"Gar, can we get past this?"

"Easy for you to say. As soon as somebody who looks exactly like you gives her some bullshit story she's on his rod."

"Gar. Some other time. We've gotta come up with something to stop Red X from doing it again or doing something else. I tried to stop him but if I have any interest at all, even the tiniest fraction of 1 percent in doing what he's doing, then I can't stop him. I . . . tried to stop him both times. I don't want to cheat on Jinx! But, I'm not some kind of saint or something. Star and Raven are hot. Any guy would have at least some interest in doing them. We've gotta stop him now before he does something else we don't want and we've got a little less than 3 hours to figure out a way to do it."

"Well . . . what about Z? Couldn't she cast some kind of magic spell?"'

"She's not around. Jinx invited her to meet her at her mother's but Z had to be in some alternate dimension or something."'

"Maybe we could break into her place and drop some of that frog powder stuff on your head. Remember that? Haha. One crystal and you turned into a frog! What was it she said about you and Flash? Uniquely su-what?"

Kid Flash groaned. "Susceptible. Uniquely susceptible to transformational energies. Fine. "

"Well, why don't we just turn you into a frog?"

"I don't want to be a frog, Gar. Transformations freak me out, okay? Besides. Z protects her place with a guard spell. If she's not there nobody else can get in."

"What if we locked you into one of those cube cages with the two layers of hard clear plastic and xenothium plasma between 'em like Slade used."

"We took those apart, Gar. There aren't any anywhere."

The two teens batted around a lot of ideas. Well, mostly Beast Boy made suggestions off the top of his head and Kid Flash explained why they wouldn't work. The thing was, it's very hard to contain a speedster. Beast Boy suggested that they take away his powers. Kid Flash said he didn't know of any way that someone could. Finally, Beast Boy asked if they didn't have something at the Flash Museum in Keystone City that they could use, all those crazy transformations villains worked on Flash.

Kid Flash shuddered. He didn't even like talking about all those transformations. He hated even the idea of them, all that black magic and futuristic devices. There was no defense against it. He hated that. Partly it was because he felt like it took away his edge. He could squeeze space and time with his super speed that gave him a huge edge over villains. They couldn't defend against a lot that he did. But magic and some of these bizarre ray guns trumped his super speed.

But partly it was because he didn't have exactly the same powers as Flash. It was the same way with Mas and Menos. Their abilities weren't exactly the same as his. They'd developed the ability to speed apart from each other for short periods but they still had that limitation. Flash's powers were different, too.

At almost 19, Kid Flash thought he might be even faster than Flash now. And he was working on an ability to take the speed out of things. He'd done it on a bullet. He hadn't caught it. He focused his thoughts a certain way and touched it in mid flight and the bullet just stopped and dropped to the ground. He took the speed right out of it. Flash couldn't do that. But Flash had an amazing control over all the molecules in his body. He could practically melt his own body down and then reconstitute it in another second and be good as new. He's used this ability to beat most of those freaky transformations that they had displays of in the Flash Museum. Turned into a mirror. Turned into a puppet. Etc etc. Kid Flash shuddered just thinking about them. Because he had no way out of it if something like that was done to him. Of course there was that one humiliating one where the way out didn't involve special molecular control. He shuddered just thinking of that one, too. Ugh. Disgusting. Of course, that might actually work.

He and Beast Boy kept batting around ideas in Gar's messy room but after a few minutes, Kid Flash realized that Gar's ideas were getting increasingly wild. Have Larry zap you! Suspended animation! Clone zombies! That was when he realized he had to make a tough choice or they were just wasting time, when Gar was veering off into clone zombies. His thoughts kept returning to the one possibility. But he shuddered at the thought of the solution. He ran his red gloved hands down his sides and took a deep breath. What else is there? He shuddered again and almost gagged thinking about it.

"Gar."

"What about we turn you into a Plasmus for three hours and-"

"Gar!"

". . sorry . . "

"Gar, I . . . I think I know one that'll work Gar."

He explained what he had in mind to Beast Boy.

"Would you really do that?" asked Beast Boy stepping across some laundry on the floor of his room and closer to where Kid Flash stood. " That's, like, totally anti-speedster."

"What other option do we have?" asked Kid Flash before taking a deep sigh and telling Beast Boy, "Okay, turn into a flea or something and jump on me. We're going to the Flash Museum in Keystone City."


	15. Fattest Boy Alive

Beast Boy changed himself into a small green bug and leaped into Kid Flash's orange hair to hitch a ride with him as he sprinted from Titans Tower to Keystone City. He actually kind of liked doing this because it was so freaky to watch the sights go by in waves of blurs the way they did when Kid Flash ran at high speed. Gar had often wondered, to himself, whose powers he'd like to have if he didn't have his own. He would've liked to be Elongated Man, stretching 500 yards or tying up a crook with just a few fingers stretched out like ropes. Or the Green Lantern gig seemed pretty sweet. That ring was powerful. And you could be pretty much normal except for having it. But Wally's power seemed especially good to him. The whole get hit by lightning and splashed head to toe in what should have been toxic chemicals thing wasn't very enticing but to be able to run like this must be fantastic. And he could dress in normal clothes and no one would really know who he was. He didn't have freaking green skin as a side effect of his power.

After just a few seconds of incomprehensible blur, Kid Flash slowed, in stages, first to a couple hundred miles an hour in the outskirts of Keystone City. Gar the bug could see cars and trucks they were blowing past now. Then, suddenly, Kid Flash was just jogging off the sidewalk of a Keystone City street and into the parking lot of the Flash Museum. Gar primed his six tiny legs and leaped up out of Wally's hair then turned into his human self in mid air before landing on his feet on the pavement beside Kid Flash.

"You okay?" asked Kid Flash.

"No sweat."

The two teens walked ahead through the parking lot. There were enough spaces for up to 500 cars in the Flash Museum lot. The lot was filled on special occasions. But it was closing time now, 6 o'clock on Sunday in Keystone City, three hours ahead of Jump City. There were some 40 or so cars filling up as people were leaving. A few people saw Kid Flash and shouted for him to come over. He and Beast Boy obliged and stood for pictures with a bunch of different little kids and some moms and dads, too.

Beast Boy liked the casual way that the Flashes interacted with the people of Keystone City. Mento was always paranoid about the general public. Doom Patrol had hardly ever interacted with real people. Most of the Justice League was like that. They floated up above the earth in a satellite, now, for god's sake. The Titans were always in danger of being like that, too, thought Gar with their Tower safely separated on an island from the inconvenient actual people of Jump City. It was both kind of paranoid and snobby too. He wanted things to be more like Keystone City was with Flash and Kid Flash.

When the last minivan full of kids pulled out of the parking lot, Kid Flash and Beast Boy waved to them and headed for the main entrance. "We could have snuck in the back. I just wanted to make sure that Mr. Myles knew we were here."

"You just like all the picture taking and stuff," said Beast Boy holding open the glass door.

Kid Flash smiled bashfully. Yeah. Kind of. But added, "Of course, I didn't hear you exactly resisting any of those little kids who wanted to sit on top of a real Tyrannasaurus Rex, either."

Beast Boy shrugged with a smile ackowledging his equal guilt.

A white haired distinguished looking older man came around the corner as they entered, "Sorry folks we're already closed for the, oh! Kid Flash! And you must be Beast Boy!"

Kid Flash introduced them. Dexter Myles, Beast Boy. Beast Boy, Mr. Myles. They shook hands and Kid Flash explained that he and Beast Boy were there to get an item from the storage room and that they'd leave out that exit, that Mr. Myles didn't have to wait up for them. Another round of friendly words and they were off. He told Beast Boy to jog alongside him and they made their way through the acre and a half's worth of displays of various Flash and Kid Flash missions. There was a display case with a life size mannequin of every major villain they'd fought. And there were displays of Flash in various conditions after he'd endured all sorts of different transformations at the hands of these villains. There was the wooden marionette of Flash like what Abra Kadabra had done to him. There was the red mirror in the outline of Flash's body like what Mirror Master had done to him. There was a version of Flash with a giant head, the top of which looked like it could contain a basketball, like what Trickster had done to him. There was a cloud Flash made only of water vapor like what Doctor Alchemy had done to him. That was actually a top quality hologram and not water vapor but almost none of the visitors ever guessed that. Try making water vapor stay in the shape of a body.

And just before they jogged past the entrance to the recently opened Flash IMAX, there was the impossibly fat 1,000 pound Flash, a replica of what Grodd had done to him. Kid Flash slowed, staring at it over his shoulder a few steps short of where Gar had stopped by the entrance to the Flash IMAX.

"Seriously? IMAX?"

"Yeah," confirmed Kid Flash jogging up to him. "Flash took cameras with him on a bunch of different sprints so that they could film what the world looks like to us and the added in a whole bunch of other footage of him on missions. It's really cool. We'll come here and watch it some time."

Beast Boy nodded enthusiastically.

Kid Flash took up another very slow jog so that Beast Boy could keep up with him and led him past the displays about Flash's missions with Elongated Man and his time with the Justice League to a featureless gray wall at the back of the building. He walked up to a certain spot and said aloud, "Kid Flash."

Suddenly a door with no handle of knob appeared in the wall and cracked open slightly. Kid Flash held it open and waved for Beast Boy to follow. He closed the door behind him and, again, said aloud, "Kid Flash." The door seemed to disappear again. Pretty clever, thought Beast Boy. No one'll be tempted to see what's behind a door they don't even know is there, will they?

With the door closed, the room was nearly pitch black but Kid Flash flipped some light switches and a series of industrial style downward facing hemispheric lights, the kind you see in some warehouses, lit the big room. It was sixty feet wide and forty feet deep and filled to eye height and in some cases higher with cardboard boxes full of stuff. They were arranged sort of haphazardly around the cement floor of the room with aisles between them and every box had some kind of black magic marker writing on it. A stack of three boxes next to Beast Boy had one labeled "Vandal Savage--Earth 2", on the bottom topped by one that said "Race with Superman--Promotions" and one labeled "First Elongated Man Joint Mission" on top of that.

All sorts of unpredictable items were overflowing the cardboard boxes. There were parts of villain uniforms, capes, cowls, helmets boots and gloves often in unfortunate shades of spandex. There were guns, knives, clubs, maces and grenades. There were reams and reams of paper, the remnants of instructions to lackeys, detailed plans to rule the world and steps for heists among other things. There were damaged items of all sorts, a laptop computer one side of which appeared to have been melted away. There were iPhones that had had corners neatly lasered off. There were halves and quarters and just minor arcs of DVD's and CD's and here and there damaged car parts.

The boxes held whatever science geek Flash had decided to keep from any mission, sometimes on the unlikeliest possibility that he might want to analyze some particular item. Flash always erred on the side of taking stuff with him from the sites of missions and fights. The overflowing boxes testified to that.

"Um, it'll take me a few minutes, Gar. I'm not sure exactly where the one I want is."

Beast Boy nodded and strolled along behind Kid Flash who was checking the title of box after box and stopping to look in some. Beast Boy's elbow bumped against some polished glass items and he picked up what looked almost like a water pistol but with a cone widening outward at the muzzle. "Hey, what's this, Wally?"

Kid Flash looked over his shoulder. "Gar! Put that down! That's Mirror Master's gun to turn anything into a mirror."

Beast Boy looked at it in his white gloved hand skeptically. "This?"

"Yes, that! Just . . put it down."

Beast Boy shrugged. Fine. What. Ever.

Kid Flash kept searching, bending over to look into one box after another but not finding what he was looking for right away. "It''ll be in one of six of seven Grodd boxes, " he explained when he looked back to see Beast Boy sighing. "And I've gotta check the boxes next to each of 'em. Sometimes things overflow."

"I can see that," said Beast Boy gesturing to the whole room. Kid Flash shrugged and went back to looking, zipping ahead 30 feet. Beast Boy followed behind him and saw a box with a long black cape, white on the inside, overflowing out of it and a poofy looking gray top and pants to go with it. Gar pulled the pants, already half out of the box the rest of the way and held them up. He snickered. What were they, 22 waist, 42 inseam? And as he stuffed them back in the box he saw a small wooden wand, almost like an orchestra conductor's baton lying atop the cape.

Kid Flash happened to glance back behind him at that moment.

"Stop!" he shouted. Gar almost jumped at the sudden noise in the quiet.

"What?"

In a hundredth of a second, Kid Flash had zipped over to stand in front of him and grab hold of his wrist.

"Gar. That's Abra Kadabra's magic wand. If you don't want to turn yourself or me or both of us into life size wooden marionette versions of ourselves or something crazy like that, then we'll have to put it down . . exactly . . the . . way . . it . . was."

"ButIonlypickeditu-"

"Garrrrrrrr. We're gonna do this slow," said the speedster gripping the shape shifter's wrist tightly and slowly forcing it down toward the box. Beast Boy listened carefully. Wally didn't usually counsel to go slow. "Is that where it was?"

"Yeah, right there on that cape," said Beast Boy.

As delicately as if defusing a bomb in the middle of an orphanage, Kid Flash had him put it down exactly as it had been. That done, he sighed.

"Sorry Gar. I should have told you there were a lot of things in here that are still dangerous."

Beast Boy sputtered a few words but just followed along behind Kid Flash casting just one more glance back at what looked like a perfectly ordinary little piece of wood. A minute later, Wally was bent over a box by the far wall away from where they'd entered and shouted, "Got it!"

Gar jogged over to where he was and saw Kid Flash trying to delicately wrestle free from the bottom box of three what looked like a dark green bazooka with some extra dials and brackets. Finally he had it free and slowly raised it up to shoulder level.

"That's it?" asked Beast Boy skeptically. "The . . the fat ray gun?"

"That's it," said Kid Flash and he removed a sheet of paper held to the long muzzle of the thing by an elastic. "The instructions," he said brandishing the sheet in front of Gar and then handing the device to Beast Boy who inspected it. The thing had some heft. It must've weighed 45 or 50 pounds. And it had knobs and dials all over it, it seemed.

"Hey, what's this for," he asked, pointing a black dial with a white indicator arrow that could be cranked either counter clockwise toward an "A" or clockwise toward a "P". Kid Flash looked at the instructions. They seemed to be pretty detailed, with something about all the other dials, buttons and knobs, but nothing about that one. He shrugged. "I don't know. Nothing happens till we go through what the instructions call the 'activation sequence' anyway. It's harmless till then."

Beast Boy nodded. The dial was set almost to the "A". He turned it almost to the "P" just to get the feel of the dial.

"Come on. Let's go out back, away from any of this dangerous stuff," said Kid Flash and he did the same say his voice into the wall thereby making a door appear trick on the wall away from the one through which they entered. When the door opened, Kid Flash led Beast Boy, carrying the ray gun, onto a loading dock area at the back of the building. There was a big paved area in front of a handful of bays at which big trucks could unload things and a few parking spaces of on the edges. But the area wasn't completely industrial looking. There was some nice lawn at the edge of it where sprinklers on timers had started spraying.

Kid Flash took a deep breath. This was closer to actually happening. God. He ran his red gloved hands down his sides. He took another deep breath.

"You really don't want to do this, do you?" asked Beast Boy.

Kid Flash sighed. "Doesn't matter. I have to do it to stop him. What if it takes Cy a couple days to figure out how to zap him out of me? Should we just let him run around using my body another couple days?

Beast Boy thought of Red X, using Kid Flash's body, having sex with Raven. He shook his head vigorously.

Kid Flash positioned Beast Boy 40 feet from the edge of the pavement, zipped over to where he would stand and then back beside Beast Boy. He read off the instructions and then he and Beast Boy, resting the bazooka like device on his shoulder, pressed the buttons and set the dials in the prescribed sequence. After three steps, the thing made a high pitched sound and then came to life with a deep humming sound and a slight vibration.

Kid Flash read off two more lines of instructions and he and Beast Boy set the indicated dials. The hum grew more prominent and the vibrations stronger. Kid Flash read the last line of instruction but told Beast Boy to wait till he was in place 40 feet away before doing it.

"But . . how long of a blast am I supposed to give you?"

Kid Flash zipped back to the spot by the curb at the side of the loading area. The timed sprinklers hissed away behind him. He shrugged. "I don't really know. I think Flash said he got like a three or four second burst when he got it. Give me three seconds."

Beast Boy nodded. Kid Flash sighed. But despite the resolute face he was presenting to Gar, inside he was screaming, what am I doing?! Red X talking to him in the back of his mind trying to convince him not to do it helped keep him going.

_You don't want to do this, man! Make this sleek body fat?! This is a universal close the deal body, West. You can close the deal with anyone with this body. You don't want to be fat. You hate fat. I know you do. You're almost like-you're almost like Howard Hughes with germs, you with fat. Don't do it!_

"Okay," shouted Kid Flash. "Now, turn the green, sequence completiion dial all the way clockwise so that the indicator arrow goes from the empty circle symbol to the full circle symbol."

Beast Boy did as instructed. The bazooka looking thing with extra brackets and dials really hummed now. The shape shifter leveled the ray gun on his shoulder and aimed it at Kid Flash. He looked to his pal. Kid Flash took a deep breath and nodded. Beast Boy grabbed the trigger and squeezed. For three seconds, a yellowish green light issued forth from the bazooka muzzle of the thing and washed over Kid Flash. It seemed like no time at all to Beast Boy.

To Kid Flash, it seemed like an eternity, first of all because he was a speedster and could do things in such tiny slivers of time that it was like he could slow down time. But also because he was practically allergic to fat. He had been the skinniest boy in school even before becoming Kid Flash. After that, he added some muscle but had scarcely an ounce of fat on him. His whole life became about the ease of motion, about barely seeming tethered to the planet by gravity at all. All his friends were super athletes in fantastic shape. And while terribly embarassed to be wearing a skin tight Kid Flash suit when he was 11 and 12 and 13 years old, he was now almost 19, more muscular, and proud of the way he looked. He wasn't an exhibitionist about it but he thought his ultra toned condition, the opposite of fat, the complete absence of fat, was what a person should aspire to be. He was polite to overweight citizens he met. He did everything he could to save them just the same as he would have to protect Jinx or Gar or Garth. But it just ran counter to the grain of everything in him. It was like a low level allergy. It didn't send you into shock. It didn't always make you sneeze. But you didn't like to be around it.

In those three seconds, while yellowish green light washed over him, Kid Flash stood with every muscle in his body tensed in fear and revulsion barely able to keep a lid on his overwhelming desire to sprint away from it, to not let it happen.

Only when the seemingly hour long three seconds had ended and the deep hum of the fat ray gun had stopped did he realize that he'd been gasping, in terror, on the verge of hyperventilating. He was petrified, every muscle flexed in terror at what was going to happen to him. Slowly, he opened one squinting eye a little wider as nothing seemed to be happening. He saw Beast Boy put the fat ray gun down on the ground. But . . . he wasn't fat. He slowed his breath. His skin felt a bit weird all over his body. It was itchy but he was terrified to scratch himself. Then it felt as though he was sweating, but not quite. It felt as though his pores were open but he wasn't hot. He wasn't sweating. Was something else was going on?

But after a few seconds more, he decided, to his intense relief, that it hadn't worked.

Thank god!

He hadn't gotten fat. He hadn't been turned into a blimp by the odd yellow green ray. Good! Good! It was a mistake, he now felt that it'd definitely been a mistake. The idea of being turned incredibly fat was so loathsome to him that he'd only been able to go through with it by thinking of it as a concept, as an idea. I'll immobilize myself. That had been the phrasing he used with himself. The idea of being fat was repellent to the teen speedster. So he felt a sigh of relief that the process hadn't worked on him. They'd just have to think of something else. They-

That's when the sounds started, sounds like someone making balloon animals at a kid's birthday party, the squeak of rubber being stretched.

Flash suits weren't made of rubber or of spandex. The material was something super stretchy invented by Flash which felt and sort of looked like something half way between rubber and spandex. When stretched, as when he first pulled it on, a suit might make a noise like that. But after they were on they didn't stretch much more and no one ever heard those sounds

"Dude, what's that sound?" asked Beast Boy as he stepped closer.

Kid Flash looked down just as his thighs suddenly expanded outward an inch.

"No!" he yelped and stepped to the side with one boot to accomodate his increasingly thunderous thighs. But the birthday party ballon animal sounds continured and Beast Boy almost snickered at the way Kid Flash's eyes went wide as he reached back of himself.

"Oh no," he barely more than squeaked. Beast Boy took a few steps forward and saw two amazing sights. One was the way Kid Flash's backside was expanding. The other was the water. All the water from the timed sprinklers that had been just sort of fizzing about above the lawn now seemed to be flying through the air toward Kid Flash.

He saw Gar looking at him and realized how wimpy he'd sounded. He tried to compose himself. As he looked down he saw the definition of his abs, the six squares under the yellow of the top of his uniform and two more under the red fade. He saw his lower abdomen, in the red of his suit just under his waist slowly swell outward. This wasn't entirely bad, he tried to console himself. The bulge of his package had always been too prominent. Just the week before, the Titans had gone to a morning meeting at the office of the mayor of Jump City. Seeing them all in the outer room next to the mayor's office, a secretary had asked if they'd like her to get them something to eat. Jinx joked that "Kid Flash'll be fine. He smuggled half a grapefruit in here with him," nodding down toward . .

The secretary had blushed and, thankfully, said nothing.

But this didn't stop at a little paunch. To Kid Flash's ongoing horror, he kept getting bigger and bigger, fatter and fatter. His paunch expanded to a gut and then just kept expanding. He pushed at it with red gloved hands, almost wishing, belatedly, to push this fat off him only to realize that that was impossible and to see, as he was doing so that even his arms were fattening up tremendously. After a few seconds more, he lifted them both to look at them. They were heavy. And rolls of fat hung down from them.

Yecchh!

He couldn't see his crotch any more. He couldn't even see his feet his chest was a saggy mess. His whole upper body looked like a yellow mud slide and he kept getting fatter.

Even his fingers were fattening now, becoming ridiculously stubby and sausage like. He felt his neck and face stretching, bulging out, sagging, getting hopelessly fat and reached up with his sausage fingers to find that he now had multiple chins and that he no longer had a clearly defined neck, not to any outward appearances. The fat of his upper body just kept going up to his head. And still he kept getting fatter.

He could feel his butt continuing to expand back of him, the whole time, but by the time he tried to reach back there again, he found, to his horror, that he couldn't. He had so much fat on his back that his larded up arms couldn't get it.

His skin ached. It was incredibly sore. And he was realizing something else that he'd forgotten about when planning this out as just a concept, just an idea, the incredible tug of all this weight. He felt like a giant with a thousand people pulling down at him with ropes, like Gulliver being attacked by the lilliputians. Only this wasn't going to end. He couldn't swat some ropes away and relieve the incredible downward pull.

He could barely maintain his balance. The slightest change in how he stood and all of a sudden it felt like another tremendous tug downward pulled at him. It didn't help that he felt like he didn't fatten consistently, porking up here then there so that he swayed slightly back and forth tll finally, he felt his butt expand some more and then stop and he looked down at the the grotesque specatcle of his own body and muttered, "What'd I do?"

He pawed at the rolls of fat that cascaded to his mid section. It was him. He could feel the touch of his fat gloved fingers pressing his uniform against the skin underneath. It was him. It was part of him. He barely suppressed a reflex to vomit. He remembered kids in junior high gym class playing a game with this three foot diameter bouncy ball. His own gut looked like he'd eaten one of those balls. He started gasping in horror again, and again nearly hyperventilated. If Red X had been right about him and fat being like Howard Hughes and germs, then this was like Howard Hughes diving into a vat of germs and them being stuck to him.

He looked up and saw Gar staring at him, the wide eyed incredulous look on his face.

"Oh my god, Wally," he gasped. "I can't believe what it did to you."

Kid Flash tried to walk over to the Museum loading bay. The level where the trucks backed up was about three feet lower than the level where workers would unload things from the back of trucks. It would give him something to lean on. But the effort just to get one foot off the ground was incredible and his thighs blocked each other, not to mention that his giant gut hung down and rested on them, too.

"Unnh . . " he lifted one foot and barely shuffled it forward.

"Unnh . . " he lifted the other and barely moved it, too. His balance was off. His weight felt not only enormous but also bizarrely distributed. And when he moved, he felt huge parts of him jiggling, rolls of his fat sliding and sloshing about.

He felt disgusting and inhuman.

"Gar! Please! Help get me over to the loading bay rise so I can lean on that."

Gar helped, holding onto one hand but it was still an incredible effort that left him almost winded and it had only been 20 feet away.

"Wally, du-hude. You would not believe your booty right now," said his shape shifter pal after stepping away from him, "like two of those swiss exercise balls, the biggest ones like Cy uses."

Kid Flash grunted angrily at Gar feeling he had to tell him this. He couldn't see or even reach his butt. This was a frickign nightmare. It was hard just to remain standing blimped out like this even when getting to lean on one bizarrely fattened hand.

"Well, I think I can definitely say that we've immobilized Red X when he takes over my body in an hour or so," he noted bitterly.

Gar looked around for a mirror to show Wally what he now looked like but realized that was a silly expectation for a loading dock. But there was another way. "Flip open your communicator, dude. I'll walk around you and let you see what you look like.

Kid Flash hesitated. Maybe it was better not to know. "Could you just make the call to Cyborg?"

"Wally. If you don't see how big you are, you'll never believe it."

"Gar! I'm carrying all this lard now!" he said pushing at the rolls of fat at his side. "This lard is me!"

"Yeah, but you can't even see half yourself," argued Gar

Kid Flash glanced down and realized he coudn't see any of the red of the lower half of his uniform. "Fine," sighed Kid Flash. He coudn't stop him anyway. He retrieved his communicator from under his glove as Gar walked around him. So humiliating. God.

But then he looked at the images of himself, the footage that Gar had just taken and nearly threw up in his mouth. He was a grotesque caricature of a human being. His whole yellow clad upper body was the shape of a hershey's kiss. His face was disgustingly puffed out and sagging. He had several chins and his chest was astoundingly saggy. Worst of all was his butt. His upper body was disgusting his butt was something beyond that. "Biggest booty ever," Gar had snickered taking footage of it. It didn't even seem possible. Could all that really be him?!?

"Just call Cy, Gar. Please."

Beast Boy dialed on his communicator and Kid Flash let out a sigh. We call Cy. He comes here in the T-Jet and brings us back to the Tower. He figures out how to separate me and Red X. I sauna all this lard off me. Cy zaps me. I see if I can patch things up with Jinx.

Kid Flash had just finished running this sequence through his head when he suddenly noticed Gar's communicator practically shoved in his face.

"What?"

"Read it."

CAN'T LEAVE NOW. THE IMPOSSIBLE TO REACH DR. SZEBO WHO IVE BEEN TRYING TO MEET FOR 5 YEARS IS HERE EXPLAINING NEW ROBOTICS THEORIES. SEE YOU TOMORROW. I RELAYED YOUR MESSAGE ASKING FOR A T-JET TO EAST. --CY

"East?!" squeaked Kid Flash looking down at himself and suddenly recalling the image that Gar had shown him of his massive butt. "East is gonna see me like this?! I"m disgusting!"

He momentarily considered running and hiding but realized he could barely walk never mind run and what could he hide behind, a building? A steamship?

"Fuck!" he groaned. The worst part is that he couldn't be mad at Cy. Cy didn't know he'd turned himself into a lardass. And he'd been trying to talk to that Dr. Szebo for years about his theories of robotics. It was very important for Cy.

But, East?! When he looked like this?! He could barely stand to look at himself. He projected his own complete disgust onto the twins, his speedster proteges! And Garth! Oh god. How would they regard him afterward when they'd seen him in such repugnant condition. He didn't want to be seen like this. But after glancing around quickly, as if hoping to somehow see a way out of this and feeling his several chins swaying back and forth, he realized there was no way out. He sank bank agaisnt the edge of loading dock, his massive bulk flattening against the concrete.

A minute later, the telltale whoosh of a T-Jet filled the air of the loading area behind the Flash Museum and East's T-Jet touched down. The engines cut out and the entrance ramp extended. Mas and Menos zipped out and stopped 10 feet from him, staring. He just barely stopped himself from saying something to them. Please don't be sickened by my appearance.

And then they fell to the ground laughing.

Ahahahahaha!

Ahahahahaha!

They pointed at their now gargantuan mentor and laughed till their eyes teared. They laughed so hard they clutched their sides in pain. And then they zipped around behind him and fell down laughing again at the view from there.

And then Speedy stepped down from the T-Jet and had to steady himself on the wing he was laughing so hard at Kid Flash. Mas zipped around from of him again, still laughing. Menos ran in front of his suddenly lardasssed mentor and made a motion like they'd seen Kid Flash do, an imitatiion of buffing fingernails on a lapel

"Muchacho mos gordo," he stammered out between guffaws and he and Mas ended up falling on the ground convulsed in laughter again.

"Yeah, yeah. Fattest boy alive. Very funny, Menos."

"Du-haha-dude? What happened to you?" laughed Speedy as he doubled over with laughter.

"Gar asked about what had made Flash fat once before and I showed him the ray gun. It wasn't supposed to be loaded."

"You look like you're a bit loaded," snickered a grinning Bee as she exited the T-Jet followed by a shocked Aqualad. "Maybe double stuffed. How is that suit not exploding? How much do you weigh?"

Kid Flash gritted his teeth. He didn't want to know. He didn't want anyone else to know.

"Yeah," laughed Speedy. "Just how much do you weigh, Precious?"

He, Mas and Menos fell over laughing at this, too.

Aqualad and Bee stepped past them, but even Aqualad was smiling, trying to suppress a laugh.

"You too, Garth?"

Aqualad strode around surveying the enormous red and yellow clad former speedster. "Well, you have to admit that it's ironic to the point of being risible, Wallace. You, the very archtype of slender energy somehow turned into the largest, widest person any of us have ever seen. Is-is that really all you?" he asked reaching forward and patting Kid Flash's hemispherical gut.

"Yeah, that's not one of those sumo suits, is it?" snickered Speedy going behind Kid Flash and giving him a hard slap one one side of his enormous behind.

"Ow! Don't do that. My skin just expanded a few minutes ago."

Bee was front and center now, smiling and shaking her head. "You're sure it wasn't that huge appetite of yours finally catching up with you?"

"I'm not fat because I eat a lot."

"No. He's just big boned," cracked Speedy causing him, Mas and Menos to fall down laughing again.

Kid Flash groaned.

"So, let me get this straight," said Bee quite enjoying herself. "The guy who beat me out to run against Robin for overall Titans leadership accidentally shot you with a ray gun that turned you into the boy with the most junk in his trunk of anyone on earth. Is that right?"

"It was just an accident," defended Kid Flash before Beast Boy said anything.

"Well, let's just see how much of an accident it was," she said and grabbed a hold of one red gloved hand. "Oh my god, even your hands are completely larded up. Come on now," she said and started leading Kid Flash along slowly. He wasn't sure what she was getting at. At first he thought she was challenging that it was an accident when she said 'how much of an accident it was'. He didn't want to reveal to her what was really going on. But then he saw that she was leading him, in his arduous shuffling steps to a freight scale at one side of the loading dock.

"No! Come on. It doesn't matter how much I weigh now."

But Bee was clever. She saw that he could barely move and that his balance was extremely precarious. Just a little more tug forward added more momentum then he could resist. She gave him another small tug and the reluctant former speedster found himself standing on the freight scale used to weigh deliveries.

The red digital display whirred away, the numbers changing too rapidly for the others to focus on. Kid Flash tried to shuffle off the scale before it gave a reading but Speedy poked him in his giant gut as he started to move, "Stay there, Kid Fat", and that little force was too much for him to overcome.

At last, the display steadied.

998

999

1,000

Bee, Speedy, Mas and Menos burst into laughter and even Aqualad and Beast Boy couldn't help but smirk. A thousand pounds!

1,001

1,002

And finally, with a little electronic bell signalling that this was it, 1,003 pounds.

Kid Flash weighed 1003 pounds.


End file.
